No Fluke Sprague Off To Another Hot Start

By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor

When the Major League Fishing Bass Pro Tour season was put on hold last month because of the coronavirus, Jeff Sprague was in a familiar place. He’d just logged another top-10 finish and was sitting among the top 10 in points.

While just three of the eight scheduled events were completed prior to the hiatus, Sprague had re-established himself as a force on MLF’s top circuit, picking up where he left off in 2019 when he finished 2nd in the points race. Over the first 11 full-field BPT events, no angler has accumulated more points (696) than Sprague. In those 11 tournaments, he’s notched five top-10 finishes. He currently sits 5th in the latest BassFan World Rankings. Last year, he won the MLF Challenge Cup, marking his first win with the organization as he toppled a field of 30 BPT pros who had qualified based on their finishes in the first BPT events of 2019.

It’s not as if Sprague has snuck up on his fellow competitors or fell out of the sky and landed in a Bass Cat and started catching bass, though. Sprague rose through the co-angler ranks on the FLW Tour before blossoming into a consistent performer during his five seasons as an FLW Tour pro – he finished 6th in points in 2016 and 4th the following season. That he’s flourishing under the MLF format may come as a surprise to some, but not Sprague.

“I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had fishing,” he said. “I wholeheartedly love the MLF format. It makes bass fishing fun again. I always enjoyed five-fish limit events and would go back to that if we have to, but I absolutely eat up the format we have.

“I like to fish the moment and conditions and I don’t have to make myself do something all day just to try to catch five or six bass. That’s a style of tournament fishing and I get it and I don’t claim to be the best at it. I’ve never claimed to be the greatest at it, but this format was a new breath of life for me. It’s similar to the way I grew up and the way I enjoy I fishing. It just falls into my wheelhouse.”

‘Cast by Cast and Day by Day’

When the season was halted, Sprague said he wasn’t thinking big picture in terms of where he stood in the points standings. He was looking forward to the next couple of tournaments, especially Grand Lake.

“Obviously, I’m not a guy who looks at it like I was making another run at AOY,” he said. “I like to fish cast by cast and day by day. I was super excited about the remainder of the schedule. Grand is a place I’ve always enjoyed and I was really looking forward to the rest of the year.”

Now, he just hopes to make another competitive cast at some point this year. While no official plans have been announced, Sprague said MLF has informed anglers it’s hoping to get three more BPT tournaments and all four of its Cup events in this year.

“Because of the unforeseen circumstances, now it’s like I’m almost as excited as I was at the beginning of the year because we don’t know what the future holds,” he said. “I really like to fish the spring and we hit the lakes at their prime times, but going into the remaining events it’s going to be the kind of fishing I really like to do. It’ll be a little more difficult because we normally don’t stretch that far into the year as these will. It’ll take a new mindset even if guys have been to these lakes before. I think it could be a case of a guy with a lack of knowledge could do well. That’s worked for me before, going somewhere with no preconceived notions based on history.”

Sprague placed 35th at Lake Eufaula to start the season, then took 5th at Lake Okeechobee and 7th at Lake Fork/Lake Athens, giving him 10 Knockout Round appearances in 11 BPT events.

At Okeechobee, he felt like he was around the right caliber of fish to contend and ultimately he was correct in his thinking and location, but Jacob Powroznik wound up making the right move when it counted.

“I found the fish to win the tournament,” Sprague said. “I fished between Aaron (Martens) and Jacob on some outside eelgrass lines. Then the wind kicked up and move the fish. Powroznik exposed it and he moved shallower to the cleaner water. I moved out to check points and buggy whips and just couldn’t relocate them.”

For the Fork event, which brought him to his native Texas and close to home, he had planned to target pre-spawn fish in their staging areas, but by day 2 of practice, a massive wave of fish had pushed toward the bank to spawn.

“I quit practicing then and went looking,” he said. “That’s where my local knowledge came into play because I knew a few different places to look.”

It was the first tournament of his career in which he predominantly sight-fished, relying heavily on a weightless Strike King Ocho stick worm.

For the final round at Lake Athens, though, Sprague was hoping for a better outcome and a better showing by the local anglers. He said he was aware of groups of local anglers organizing fishing parties on the lake in the days leading up the conclusion of the BPT event.

“The locals did their best to make sure that lake didn’t show off,” he said. “I was super happy for Ott that he found a wad of fish like he did because that’s how we should've all caught them and been able to show how good that place really is. It’s just sad the lake didn’t show off for more of the anglers to enjoy the Championship Round.”

Sprague thinks for events where MLF plans to utilize multiple lakes for a BPT event, MLF may want to consider withholding announcing the venue for the Championship Round to guard against local fishing pressure intensifying on that body of water while the event takes place elsewhere.

Staying Busy

Sprague has kept busy during the tournament layoff. He works alongside FLW Pro Circuit angler Jason Reyes, also a Texas native, for Quality Manufacturing, a firm that supplies retailers through the Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston areas with various goods. Recently, their focus has been on making sure employees at the Kroger grocery stores in those markets have an ample supply of cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves.

He’s done some turkey hunting and crappie fishing and while social distancing has become a new addition to the American lexicon, Sprague said he’s been exercising social media distancing, meaning he’s promised his two kids he’ll spend less time on his phone and social media while he’s home in an effort to devote more time to them.

“When this all started, I found myself on my phone a lot,” he said. “I was reading news reports and all about stuff that was out of my control. All I can do is take care of my family, so I promised the kids I wouldn’t be on my phone as much. It’s been a blessing.”