At age 58 and with 33 professional seasons behind him, Larry Nixon still gets jacked up about fishing a championship event. But his enthusiasm over the next one he'll compete in is tempered a bit by the memory of the last time he was at that particular venue.
The place is the Three Rivers in Pittsburgh, which will host the 2009 Forrest Wood Cup in 2 weeks. The Arkansas legend was there 4 years ago for the lowest-weight Bassmaster Classic in history, and he didn't have a lot of fun en route to his 31st-place finish.
He didn't even average a pound a day.
"I'm excited about competing for the purse back there, but I'm not real excited about the fishery," he said. "Maybe it'll be better and it won't be quite as tough as it was, but August is not a good month no matter where you go."
Well, he'll at least have some Three Rivers experience on his side, right?
"I don't think that'll help at all, with as much of the water we fished back then being off-limits. Two of the pools that I thought were the best pools won't be available this time, so I'll have to lock up one of the other rivers and see what I can find in that direction."
Starting All Over
Indeed, the Cup anglers will be looking at a different layout of the Ohio, Monongahela and Allegheny rivers than the '05 Classic competitors were confronted with. Some areas that were off-limits then will be in play for the Cup, and vice-versa.
The most attractive spot Nixon found in '05 was two locks up the Monongahela from the launch, and he regrets that he won't be able to go there this time.
"There were two pools with a lot of grass and I thought it was the best-looking water in the whole system," he said. "It wasn't won there (Kevin VanDam topped the field with a paltry 12-15 total), but several of the Top 10 were in there and it easily could have been won there.
"I think (FLW) got some bad info from somebody that we didn't want to be up that river. I don't know the whole story, but that's what I got when I asked why (it was off-limits). If we could fish those two pools, it would scatter the boats out and make it a better tournament."
At this point, he has no idea what his plan of attack will be and he won't carry any preconceived notions into the 4-day practice period.
"I plan to target largemouths if I can find a place to fish for them in any of the pools. If I don't find anything I like, then I'll go after smallmouths."
He's Done it Before
If Nixon's prior Pittsburgh experience doesn't help him, maybe having won a tough-bite championship event will. Longtime BassFans will recall that he topped the 1983 Classic at the Ohio River with just 18-01 over 3 days.
Nixon finished among the Top 13 in the FLW Tour Angler of the Year race for the third time in 4 years.
"(The Three Rivers) ranks right up there with the Ohio, and I was able to win one of the toughest Classics ever there," he said. "Somebody's going to win, and maybe having it tougher will be better for me, who knows?
"The most important thing you have to do in a tournament like this is focus on one bite at a time, whether it's (a keeper) or not. The way I went into the Ohio was with the thought that if I could catch five keepers a day, I'd be right there when it was all over with. All I fished for was five bites a day, and that's about what I got.
"You're just not going to get a bite every time you want to," he concluded, "but you have to stay prepared to get one all day."
He's coming off a solid season in which he finished 11th in the Angler of the Year (AOY) race – the third time in the last 4 years that he's ended up 13th or better in that department. It included a 3rd-place finish at Kentucky Lake and a 12th at Norman, where he'd won 2 years before.
"It wasn't a bad year by any means, but I'm still ticked off about my performance at Guntersville (98th). I should've had a good tournament there, but I listened to all the local scuttle about how the fish were chasing Rat-L-Traps. I should've thrown nothing but a jig and a big spinnerbait and a jerkbait and not gotten into all the hoopla over crankbaits and looking for those kind of fish.
"If I'd just gone to the areas there where I know fish live and figured what they wanted me to do each day, I would've been fine."
Notable
> Nixon is disappointed that a couple of his longtime running mates didn't qualify for the Cup this year. George Cochran's chances were obliterated when he missed the Norman event due to gall-bladder surgery and Rob Kilby had a wildly erratic campaign that left him 82nd in the points.
> The Cup will be his 36th championship tournament at the tour level. He's made the event 11 times and he fished 25 Classics.
> He said his 12th at Norman was more gratifying than his 3rd at Kentucky Lake because he'd had a lackluster practice at the former event. "I was on them at Kentucky – I had a bunch of fish that I had a chance to win with. It wasn't a big disappointment that I didn't win, but there wasn't that big burst of excitement like when I did well at Norman."
