By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor

Over the past couple of FLW Tour seasons, Troy Morrow has produced a mixed bag of finishes.

In 2014, he posted back-to-back top-10s at Beaver Lake and Pickwick Lake, but also had a pair of triple-digit results that year. He missed the Forrest Wood Cup by 12 points.

Last year, two finishes of 94th or worse accompanied two more Top-10s. He wound up squeaking into the Cup by eight points.

During the 2016 campaign, the roller coaster-ride was replaced by early-season struggles, then a furious rally in the second half that netted him the last berth in the Forrest Wood Cup via the Angler of the Year points. Needless to say, despite competing in his fourth career Cup, it wasn’t the season he was hoping for.

“In my mind, consistency is making a check every time,” he said. “Finishing in the middle of the pack is not consistency. That’s just average fishing. For someone to be consistent, they’ll maybe miss one check. You should be right there with a shot to do well. If you’re making a check, a couple key fish can change that to having a shot to win.”

He never found himself in that position this season, a tough pill to swallow for the former BFL All-American winner from Eastanollee, Ga.

“It was a frustrating year for me,” he said. “I got off to a bad start and it was hard to recover from it. All in all, it was not a total loss. I still managed to make the Cup, but it wasn’t on par for what I think I should average.”

Sluggish Start

Morrow went 0-for-3 as far as making the money cut to start the year – not a fun position to be in when he’s heavily reliant on tournament winnings to fund his fishing career.

“I don’t have big-money sponsors,” he said. “I fish for checks. I know one bad year can put me out and all of a sudden that was looming large. It tends to get your attention pretty quick and it’s not good for the stomach.”

The stress and worry began to mount after the opener at Lake Okeechobee, where he finished 86th, just about smack dab in the middle of the pack.

“It was very different and it changed daily,” he said. “I had fish found, but the wind switched and muddied up the water and it was a battle from then on.”

He thought he could rebound at Lake Hartwell, what he considers his home lake, but his pattern fizzled as others began to feast on early spawners.

“I didn’t count on those fish spawning that early,” he added. “My pattern was solid until the boats realized they were spawning and started rattling those docks.”

The next stop was in mid-April at Beaver Lake, where Morrow’s had several money finishes, including a top-10.

“I love to go there and I feel like I’m understanding it better and better,” he noted, “but it threw a different lake at us this year with predominantly dirty water. I caught some big smallies in practice and that led me astray again. That was another one where I figured it out on day 2, but didn’t have enough time to build on it.”

A 71st-place outcome in northwest Arkansas left him 76th in points at the halfway point, meaning he had three tournaments to overtake roughly 40 anglers in the AOY standings to move into Cup contention.

Offshore Turnaround

His second-half surge started at Pickwick, where he’d finished 4th in 2014. Again, it was largely a struggle with the ledge bite not being near what he’d expected it to be. He averaged 13 pounds a day and wound up 34th.

“It was a completely different lake than we’ve seen before,” he said. “I’m not sure if it was our timing or the additional grass that had grown, but I had a hard time finding anything offshore. I like to go deep and use my electronics, but I ended up running shallow patterns and managed to squeak it out. That made four lakes that hadn’t fished anything like they had in the past.”

He knew heading into the final two events that he’d likely need top-30 finishes to clinch a Cup berth and he started practice at Kentucky Lake scouring the ledges, like many others, in search of those early-summer schools.

“I went out looking for what the fish should’ve been doing,” he said. “There weren’t as many offshore schools, but enough that I felt comfortable. It was just a matter of who you were going to share with or if you could share with somebody.”

He said the fish weren’t showing up on his electronics like they had in the past. He adjusted some settings on his Lowrance units and that made all the difference.

“They marked different this year,” he said. “They weren’t as obvious and I had to study them more. They were tighter to the bottom and not near as active. I had to adjust my sensitivity and color on the StructureScan to get the best image.”

After catching 11-09 on day 1, he bagged 21-04 on day 2 and shot up to 23rd.

“I had a shot at the top 20,” he said. “I didn’t have the best first day. I survived and I finally got on a school I wanted to fish on day 2 toward the end of the day. It had tripled in size since I saw it in practice. I had 14 pounds in the boat with an hour to go and when I killed the engine and drifted across the spot so I didn’t spook them, I told my co-angler I was fixing to catch them.”

A 4-pounder on the first cast was followed by a 5-pounder that jumped off in the net and clinched Morrow’s best finish of the season.

With some momentum in his favor – he’d rocketed up to 33rd in points – he headed to Lake Champlain for the finale. He figured a top-40 outcome would lock him into the Cup, but he didn’t want to come away without a check.

“We had a really windy practice,” he said. “It was not super rough, but just windy enough. I overlooked the obvious stuff. The smallies were spawning big time, but you couldn’t see them in the chop. I caught some on top, but never realized what was going on until day 2.”

By then, he was scrambling. He averaged 15 1/2 pounds a day and wound up 67th, low enough that he didn’t bother looking at the points standings afterward. He figured he’d nuked his hopes to make the Cup.

He was actually back on the water on the evening of day 2 perch fishing when Brandon Cobb called him to let him know he’d clinched the final spot via the points.

“I was determined to take something home, even if it was a cooler full of perch,” he said.

Notable

> Morrow is possibly the only pro who has three sonar/GPS units on his bow. He has another two units by the steering wheel and uses a third during practice. All of the Lowrance units serve to give him all of the information and visuals he needs before and during events.

“I like to use an additional map during practice,” he said. “That way I can keep my Navionics zoomed in so I don’t run over anything on a strange lake. On the other one, I have the Lowrance mapping up because I’m able to trace creek channels.”

His triple-screen setup on the bow allows him to have one screen dedicated to the StructureScan transducer that’s on the bow of the boat.

“If I drive over something while fishing, I know I’ll go over it with the StructureScan to get a better look at it,” he added. “It’s all about dedicating as big a screen as I can to each element so I get clear images. The HDS-9s are good because they’re clear and draw less power. I learn a little more on my setup each year.”