The Forrest Wood Cup started fast for Adrian Avena, who was making his second appearance in the season-ending championship. He found himself in 4th place after day 1 following a strong 13-02. After that, the Red River got stingy and his weight dropped off by 4 pounds on day 2.
Needing a rally on day 3 to make the Top-10 cut, the New Jersey angler posted 10-03 for a 3-day aggregate of 32-03, but it wound up being an ounce shy of 10th. It was an excruciating way to finish the Cup considering the good start.
"Your whole goal is to get here and I accomplished that," he said. "Everybody here is competitive. When you get here in this situation you want to have a Top 10. Then when you get in that Top 10, you want to win. Of course, it's disappointing because I didn't make the final cut."
He caught the vast majority of his fish on a crankbait (any chartreuse/blue or chartreuse/black pattern) worked near rocky, wind-blown banks. One of his key spots in the morning was a rock cut leading back into a pad field known as Do Not Dredge. He caught fish almost at will there on days 1 and 2, but the quality subsided.
"I fished 90 to 95 percent of the time in the main river," he said. "I was fishing anything that had wind on it. I also fished some cut-throughs and when the wind was blowing, it blew some current in those. It was textbook and you wanted to make sure you were going with the current. I just cranked a bunch of rock and jetties. Those were a big thing, too."
The Big Bite Lookback, which focuses on the angler who's first out of the final cut at each tour-level event, is brought to you by the great folks at Big Bite Baits.
