By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor
Only five anglers can lay claim to having won an FLW Angler of the Year (AOY) title over the past decade. It's a tough club to elbow your way into because guys who've copped the honor once tend to do it again ... and a select few have accomplished it three times.
Texan Jeff Sprague badly wants to joint that pantheon and he keeps inching his way toward it. This year he came up just three places short, trailing only competitors who already had points titles on the résumés (Bryan Thrift, Andy Morgan and Anthony Gagliardi).
It was his second straight single-digit finish – he was 6th in 2016 when Morgan won his third AOY. He led that race with two events to go, but then turned in what were easily his worst finishes of the campain (71st at Kentucky Lake and 57th at Champlain).
What's it going to take to get over the proverbial hump?
"I'm not sure how anybody else approaches it, but from the beginning of the year on I start every tournament with a clean slate and try to make every day the best it can be – I want to make ever cast that I make that day count. If I do that, then I don't have to worry about the AOY deal – I'll let the finishes fall where they may and see how it all adds up at the end of the year.
"Like everybody else (on the circuit), there are two things I really want to do; one is win the Angler of the Year and the other is win the Forrest Wood Cup. Winning the Cup solidifies your status, but if you win the Angler of the Year you didn't have just a good tournament, you had a great year and that would mean more to me.
"Just one bite at one or two events can make all the difference."
More at Ease Now
The 36-year-old Sprague has finished among the top 50 on the final points list in all four of his Tour seasons. He barely slipped inside that mark in the first two (47th in 2014 and 49th and '15), and then made a major leap last year.
He said experience has been the biggest driver of his improvement over the past 2 years.
"I've become more and more comfortable with the mental side of it and the decision-making part," he said. "I have a better understanding of the quality of fish I actually have (at the conclusion of practice) vs. what I need to continue to look for in the tournament.
"After practice I might feel good about one or two things, and then in the tournament I'll look for other things to develop because we're usually on these bodies of water at a time of year when they're changing every day."
He's no longer afraid to scrap his practice entirely and do something totally different once competition gets under way.
"That can make the difference between a 50th-place finish and a top-10. If things were warming up during practice but then you get out there on the first day and the north wind is blowing 35 (mph) and it's really cold, the fish aren't going to be doing what they were doing before.
"Some guys try to force it and when what they were doing doesn't work, they just die with it. You have to be able to make the transition and chase what's going on that particular day."
Beaver was a Killer
Sprague's lone non-money finish this year was a 66th at Beaver Lake. He'd placed 3rd there the year before and was anticipating another strong showing.
"I went there thinking it was going to be another fun tournament and even after practice my confidence was lights-out," he said. "Well, the water rose 12 feet or something crazy like that during the tournament. On day 1 I caught a decent bag to keep myself in contention, but the water came up another 2 feet the next day and I had to punt on what I was doing.
"I ran up the river and busted through a bunch of logjams, but I only caught a small sack of (spotted bass) where I thought the largemouths were. I punted again and came back down, thinking I could catch one good largemouth in 4 hours, but I never got that bite. Decisions like that go such a long way in our sport and it goes to show that even though you had a good derby the year before, a lot can change."
There's no Beaver stop on next year's schedule for just the second time in what seems like forever. He's excited about having two Florida events (Lake Okeechobee and the Harris Chain to begin the campaign), but a bit wary of the tournament at Lake St. Clair that will conclude the regular season.
"Those smallmouth lakes are anybody's game and I feel like it takes some of the skill factor out," he said. "A guy could find a wad of fish on one rock and catch 20 pounds just by drifting back and forth across it. There's a little bit more luck involved."
