Kentucky Lake Top 5 Patterns – Day 2
It’s anyone’s game on the final day
For Kentucky Lake, the top 10 are ridiculously tight heading into the final day of the Costa FLW Series Championship. Anyone in the top four is a fish away from the lead, and Bryan Thrift showed off the potential the lake has if you hit it right when he caught 27 pounds, 8 ounces on Thursday.
Right now, most of the action is going down far south of Paris Landing near New Johnsonville, Tenn., where the big lake begins to transition back into the Tennessee River. There, topwaters on bars and shallow points are doing a lot of the damage, but it’s not without some nuance. Some pros are fishing considerably farther south than others, and it’s not just topwaters in the top 10.
2. Larry Stoafer – Leavenworth, Kan. – 31-9 (10)
Larry Stoafer, a military retiree, grew up fishing Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley, but he’s really fishing the Tennessee River this week.
“I’m doing what everybody else is doing. I think I just chose a better part of the lake to do it on,” says Stoafer. “I’m making a long run. It takes about an hour and 15 minutes to get to them, and I’m throwing a topwater.”
Stoafer says he’s Fishing the mouths of feeder creeks and shallow bars off the main river, and he’s catching about eight keepers a day. Though he’s mostly relied on a topwater, he says he mixed in a swimbait in today’s calm conditions.
“I stayed on them a little longer than I wanted to yesterday,” says Stoafer. “We finished early today. I stopped at about 1 o’clock and came back. We’ve been leaving them biting, but I don’t know how many more fish are up there. You’ve got to fish a lot of places, but they’re pretty predictable where they’re at.”
3. Bryan Thrift – Shelby, N.C. – 31-1 (7)
Methodically walking a topwater over shallow bars and flats worked to the tune of 27-8 on day one, but it never worked for Bryan Thrift on day two. Instead, the reigning FLW Tour Angler of the Year had to scratch up two keepers off the bank – one on a shaky head and one on a buzzbait.
“I fished all the same stuff I fished yesterday and a lot of new stuff. I just never could get bit. The two I weighed were the only two keepers bites I had,” says Thrift. “Tomorrow I’m gonna go do what I did yesterday and what I did today. It’s the only chance I’ve got. If you get four or five bites you can have a big bag, and if you don’t you have 3 pounds.”
4. Bradford Beavers – Ridgeville, S.C. – 30-13 (10)
The most consistent of the top five by weight and numbers, Bradford Beavers has chalked up 15 pounds a day and is looking to make his second consecutive Forrest Wood Cup.
“I did the same exact thing as day one,” says Beavers, who is fishing shallow with a walking topwater. “I went to my first spot and fished it about 40 minutes and never had a bite. Then I went to my best spot and caught three there, and then I ran around and didn’t do anything. Then I went back to that spot [his best spot] again and caught three more that were pretty good.
“I probably had 15 bites. I just could not get a hook in them,” relays the South Carolina angler. “The potential was there to have a 17-, 18-pound day, but my problem is I’ve only got one spot.”
His one spot does seem to be pretty good. It’s a classic shallow bar with stumps near New Johnsonville, and it’s got some good fish for sure. Assuming Beavers leans on it hard tomorrow, we’ll find out just how much juice it has come weigh-in.
5. Tim Fox – Meridan, Miss. – 28-13 (8)
Apart from pre-practice, this is Tim Fox’s first time on Kentucky Lake. After catching 18-6 on day two, he might be in line for his first Forrest Wood Cup appearance.
Fox says he fished shallow bars with a topwater on day one, but he had to adjust to catch his fish on day two.
“I started out that way this morning, and the wind blew me out,” says Fox. “I had to run around, and I finally started fishing some stuff I hadn’t even fished in practice, and I caught eight keepers in the last 45 minutes.”
Fox says he ended up just fishing super shallow banks with a topwater, and was actually fishing fairly close to takeoff instead of far down the lake with the rest of the crowd.