Lake Travis Top 5 Patterns Day 2
It's an offshore deal on Travis
Day two of the FLW Tour event presented by Quaker State on Lake Travis dawned much warmer and ushered in a gusty south wind by noon that threw some pros off their game. Catches were off a bit from day one and the leaderboard welcomed some new names.
While Stephen Patek and Bryan Thrift swapped the top two spots, three new pros entered the top five with catches in the high teens.
Here’s a closer look at who makes up the top five now.
Larson's winning co-angler pattern
2. Bryan Thrift – Shelby, N.C. – 34-2
After sacking up nearly 25 pounds on day one, Bryan Thrift came back down to earth for a visit today with a mere-mortal catch of 9 pounds, 6 ounces.
“It was back to reality for me today,” Thrift says. “This is more like what I thought I would catch yesterday. Yesterday was a gift.”
Usually a runner and gunner, Thrift has turned more toward milking a handful of areas for this event.
“That’s what happens when I can’t get on anything to run,” he says. “At Guntersville and here I never really found enough stuff to run, so I just have to set down in one or two spots because it’s all I got.”
The wind hindered Thrift today as well.
“I need it to be slick calm like it was yesterday,” he says. “I wanted to run around a little more today and fish some new stuff, but I just couldn’t with that wind pounding everything. So I just fished the few areas I had and obviously they weren’t as good as yesterday.”
3. Jeremy Lawyer – Sarcoxie, Mo. – 31-11
Jeremy Lawyer bounced from 29th place to 3rd on the springboard of a 19-pound, 7-ounce catch today.
This morning, Lawyer decided to scrap all his fishing from day one and just go practice again. He ended up running across a mother lode.
“What I caught yesterday was just one here and one there,” Lawyer says. “And I never got anything solid going, so this morning I just went to a whole new area I’ve never seen before in my life and ran into them.”
Lawyer was tight-lipped about his productive spot, saying that it’s a typical thing he does on Lake of the Ozarks for staging fish this time of year and if anyone else who has fished Lake of the Ozarks knew what the key ingredients were, they could possibly duplicate it pretty easily.
He did say it’s a form of offshore fishing and that he is dragging something on the bottom anywhere from 20 to 40 feet deep.
“I had in my mind what I was looking for this morning,” he says. “The first area I ran to this morning sort of fit the bill for what I wanted to fish. I fished in there for about 45 minutes before I ran across a sweet stretch and it was on – I caught four fish pretty quick. Then I returned to that spot this afternoon and caught one more to finish my limit.”
Since the pattern is highly identifiable, Lawyer spent some of his day fishing similar areas, but nothing else ever materialized.
“It’s got to be working somewhere else on this lake,” he adds. “I just need to find another spot where the fish are set up like that.”
4. Clark Wendlandt – Leander, Texas – 29-10
After getting off to an inconspicuous start on day one with 12 pounds, 7 ounces, hometown favorite Clark Wendlandt bounced back in a big way on day two, catching the biggest bass in the Pro Division weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces to vault himself into fourth place with a 17-pound, 3-ounce limit.
Wendlandt’s big bass bit within the first few minutes of the morning, putting him back in the race early in the day. He caught the giant off of a deep spot, something he wishes he spent more time finding during the pre-practice period.
“With as warm of a winter as we had, I really thought they were going to be shallow for this tournament,” Wendlandt says. “And I always practice for what I think is going to happen in the tournament, so I spent a lot of time looking for good shallow spots. And there are a few fish shallow, but a majority of these fish are still deep and I’ve only got about five good spots that are deep like that.”
Wendlandt only visited two of his deep spots today. Once he caught the big one, he figured he better save his limited deep stuff for the finals so he ran history spots to finish out a limit.
“One thing I know about this lake is you really have to manage your fish here,” he says. “I don’t think a guy can just whale on them every day. So I’m trying to conserve what little deep stuff I have. I just wish I had spent more time looking for it in the pre-practice.”
5. Mark Rose – West Memphis, Ark. – 28-12
Another well-known pro who got even with Lake Travis bass today was Mark Rose who sacked up 17 pounds, 3 ounces to round out the top five.
“I did today what I should have done yesterday,” Rose says. “I ran up the river yesterday and tried to force something that didn’t work. Today I went and fished like I like to do – offshore – and it worked out much better. I’m still fishing shallow, but it’s more of an offshore shallow.”