Jeff Sprague started the season with a solid 12th-place finish at Lake Toho, which stood out as the best showing of his brief Tour career. That was until he closed the season with an 11th-place effort at the Potomac River to notch his third money finish of the year.
“For only being in my second year, I feel blessed to be where I’m at,” he said. “I’m excited for next year.”
He didn’t have a productive practice and figured the 10-11 he caught on day 1 would be decent, but he was sorely mistaken when he found himself in 75th place following the first day.
“The fishery is not what it was and there was a lot of crying going on in practice,” he said. “I thought I had more weight on day 1. I layed off my fish and went to some community holes. After the weigh-in, I knew it bit me in the rear and I was not happy with the decision I made.”
He bounced back with 16-00 on day 2 and jumped all the way to 8th place.
“I went back and tried to catch any and every one that would bite,” he added. “I got the bigger ones to bite from practice. That was the biggest deal.
“I had one stretch that held numbers with some 2- to 3-pounders and another stretch that had some 4s. They seemed to be concentrated into small sections or stretches of grass. The fish on the one area bit well on incoming tide and on the outgoing tide on the other so that worked out well.”
He retreated to 11th on day 3 with an 11-07 bag.
“In my short career, weather has never played such a major factor for me,” he said. “The main river grass where I was fishing had rollers coming in on it Saturday and I couldn’t fish it.
“I scrapped that and went fishing. I was lucky to able to catch a few.”
He had a three-pronged approach that featured a swim jig, a ChatterBait and a Tightlines UV Enko that he casted at isolated clumps of hydrilla.
“Hydrilla was not as easily found as years past,” he said. “There was a lot of coontail. I found a couple key areas that had hydrilla. They were not large areas, otherwise it could’ve been easier to catch bigger bag out of there.”
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