By MLF Communications Staff
EARLY, Texas – After three tough days in the Elimination Round on O.H. Ivey Lake, professional anglers competing in the Major League Fishing Team Series this week in Early, Texas, headed to a new fishery on Sunday.
Brownwood Lake was the playing field for the three two-man teams competing in Match 1 of the Knockout Round at the Patriot Cup, where teams were met with flooded willow grass, flat reeds and other emergent vegetation.
It was a closely contested day – just 1 pound, 4 ounces separated the top two teams at the end of the day – but as ScoreTracker expired, it was the Team Coign duo of Jeff Sprague and Bryan Thrift that stood alone atop the leaderboard. Team Coign caught 17 bass weighing 30-2 to pace the field and advance to the Championship Round on Tuesday.
Also advancing in second place was Team Builders FirstSource – Alton Jones Jr. and Ott DeFoe – who boated 15 bass totaling 28-14. Team Knighten Industries (Brent Chapman and Wesley Strader) was eliminated from the competition.
Sprague and Thrift boated a 2-3 within the first seven minutes of competition to get off to a quick start Sunday morning. The duo started the day targeting fish in willow grass and stayed with that pattern throughout the day.
Jones and DeFoe took the lead at the end of the first period and held it for most of the second period, but couldn’t hold off Team Coign, who rallied toward the end of Period 2 to take over the top spot once again, holding it for the remainder of the competition day.
“When you come to Central or West Texas, you think of rocky, canyon-type lakes like Falcon Lake, Lake Amistad or those types of reservoirs,” said Sprague in his postgame interview. “But then you get to Lake Brownwood, and it’s an oasis. It’s so crazy with all the vegetation.”
“It’s an absolutely beautiful lake,” Thrift interjected. “Even when you get up there in the grass, there’s rock under the water. It’s the bassiest-looking lake I’ve fished in a long time.”
Team Coign had pretty much locked up its Championship Round bid by the start of the third and final period, but the duo decided to keep pushing for the top spot.
“We don’t know where we will be fishing the Championship Round, and there’s a possibility of coming back to Lake Brownwood, but we decided to just pour it on in that final period,” said Sprague. “This was such a fun day of fishing, and in that last period, with the pressure off, we just had a great time.”
“It’s not like what we were doing was a specific thing that we knew we could come back to either,” Thrift added. “We would go back through an area where we didn’t get a bite and get four bites – or hit a spot where we had several bites and get nothing. This was just late-summer fishing, running the bank and the grass, trying to pick off some of those bluegill-feeders that were still hanging around.”
“This was opportunistic fishing at its best,” Sprague added. “It’s not every day that you get to go fishing with your buddy and someone as good as Bryan is, so it’s been a great day.”
Thrift caught a few fish on a topwater frog and on a swim worm, but it was Sprague that did most of the heavy lifting, catching 15 bass totaling 25-11 to make up the bulk of the team’s total weight and end the day atop the leaderboard.
“Bryan and I did a lot of damage today, and the key to our success was a basic swim jig (paired with) the Lake Fork Lure Co. Pro Craw, honey-craw colored – one of my brand-new, signature series baits,” said Sprague. “We could see bluegill high in the water column, and the fish were feeding on them in the water willow all day long, so this bait was just the ticket we needed. We’re going to take it with us into the Championship Round and see if we can’t do some damage with it on Tuesday.”
Here are the final numbers for the match:
1st: Team Coign, 17 bass, 30-2
Jeff Sprague, Wills Point., 15 bass, 25-11
Bryan Thrift, Shelby, N.C., two bass, 4-7
2nd: Team Builders FirstSource, 15 bass, 28-14
Ott DeFoe, Blaine, Tenn., eight bass, 15-6
Alton Jones Jr., Waco, Texas, seven bass, 13-8
Eliminated
3rd: Team Knighten Industries, nine bass, 14-13
Brent Chapman, Quivira, Kan., seven bass, 11-14
Wesley Strader, Spring City, Tenn., two bass, 2-15
Complete results from throughout the week can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Sprague caught the Berkley Big Bass of the day – a 4-3 largemouth, only the second bass over 4 pounds caught all week.
The Patriot takes place over six days in west-central Texas. The competition water for each day is top-secret and is only revealed to the anglers when they arrive at the boat ramp each morning.
The second match of the Knockout Round will take place Monday, featuring Team 7 Brew (Justin Lucas/Brent Ehrler), Team Lucas Oil (Jacob Wheeler/Dustin Connell) and Team Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff & Pouches (Luke Clausen/Martin Villa). Anglers are driven directly to the day’s competition area launch ramp by their officials. Competition begins on the water at 8:45 a.m.
The MLFNOW! broadcast team of Chad McKee and J.T. Kenney break down the extended action live every day of competition from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. CT. MLFNOW! is livestreamed on MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) app and Rumble.
