(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Reigning FLW Angler of the Year Bryan Thrift has now won that award twice. He’s also qualified for the Forrest Wood Cup 11 times, finishing in the top 10 on nine occasions, and in the top 7 the past six years. He’s done most of it with his trolling motor on high and his outboard still warm when he starts it up again. Thrift does much of his damage by hitting as many high-percentage spots as he can in a single day.
“That’s when I feel most comfortable,” he said. “Where you’re not married to one technique.”
If you want run and gun successfully like Thrift, proper preparation starts away from the water. Because you’ll be spending so much time moving from spot to spot, there’s no time on the clock for sorting through storage boxes or tying on new lures. He wants to have every possible presentation ready to go. By focusing on the highest-percentage areas – like the few rocks on an otherwise bare bank or the lone dock on a stretch of 10 with brush under it – he feels that he’s able to target feeding fish and maximize his time.
Nevertheless, he makes sure to “listen” to the fish – so if he catches one on a buzzbait next to a dredged dock, he’ll run to every other similar piece of cover in a 3-mile radius to see if he can turn it into a pattern. One thing he doesn’t do, though, is panic. If he hits 10 solid places and still has an empty livewell, he still knows that by targeting fish that are on spots specifically to feed, he’s never completely out of the game.
How does he maximize his efficiency? First, he’ll hit the most obvious community holes as early in the day as he can to pick off fish that others might steal from him. Second, he keeps up a brisk pace, rarely if ever stopping to eat or drink, knowing all the time that the next spot or next cast could be a difference-maker. Third, he doesn’t overlook any place that might hold a bass as too insignificant. “It takes a very small piece of structure to hold a big fish,” he explained. Finally, time on the outboard is not his enemy – he’s not scared to pull up the trolling motor and run 20 miles to fish one dock or a special laydown if he thinks that they’ll hold a quality fish. While he’s not afraid to hit obvious stuff, especially early in the day, he’s always looking for “stuff other people are not fishing as much.”
Thrift is a well-known dock-skipping wizard, and while a buzzbait, a square-bill, a Chatterbait and a swimbait, among other lures, get plenty of use in his boat, a jig produces many of his best fish. When skipping, he uses a Damiki Mamba exclusively in the half-unce size, which provides him with adequate weight to provide great accuracy. If he wants to slow the fall of the lure he’ll add more skirt material, or thicker rubber, or increase his line size.
If you want to learn some of the other keys to Thrift’s run-and-gun strategies, including the seasonal lure choices me makes to maximize success, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
