It ain't over till the last fat bass is weighed.
That's basically how Andy Morgan is looking at the points race in the 2015 Walmart FLW Tour season going into the last two regular-season tournaments, beginning this morning out of Dayton Boat Dock on Lake Chickamauga.
Morgan, who's from Dayton, finished first in the points standings the last two years and is ninth in the 2015 standings with 703 points - 68 behind the leader, fellow Rhea County resident and good friend Wesley Strader of Spring City. The points difference is significant but not insurmountable; the bigger problem is having to leapfrog eight guys this week and two weeks from now on the Potomac River.
But Morgan, who's made more than a million and a half dollars in his two decades on the tour, already is in the season-ending Forrest Wood Cup on Lake Ouachita in August as last year's angler of the year. He doesn't have to three-peat that title to add another notch to his remarkable record of consistent high finishes.
At the same time, he didn't compile that record by saying what's the use.
"Absolutely, I still have a chance," Morgan said Wednesday. "If I make both cuts and some other people fall flat - this ain't over till the last day of the last tournament."
One year, he recalled, he was among a group of leaders who all stumbled in the last event and the seventh-place angler going in became the champion.
"I'm going to have to blister them, there's no doubt," Morgan said, "but I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to let the chips fall where they may."
Being on his home lake doesn't seem to be an advantage, however. Some "nuggets" he thought he had figured out didn't pan out in practice Sunday through Tuesday, and he doesn't see much difference in the lake the rest of the week.
"Some things I thought would work haven't yielded many bites, so I'm going to fish water I haven't fished before on Chickamauga," Morgan said. "I'm not going to run out of stuff to fish - don't get me wrong - but I'm on an even playing field with everybody else.
"The worst thing you can do is preconceive something: I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that. That's why I'm not going to worry about it. We'll just see what happens."
Among Morgan's sponsors are Livingston Lures, Bullet boats, Evinrude motors, Zoom bait and New Breed Archery.
After 6:30 launches each morning from Dayton Boat Dock, the 300-plus boat-controlling professionals and the corresponding co-anglers will report to weigh-ins there at 3 p.m. today and Friday. The top 20 in each division will go out again Saturday, and then the top 10 will fish in the final round Sunday, competing for a top pro award of as much as $125,000 and a top co-angler prize of up to $25,000.
Saturday's and Sunday's weigh-ins are set for 4 p.m. at Wal-Mart in Dayton. An FLW Expo will be held there from noon to 4 those two days.
Contact Ron Bush at rbush@times freepress.com or 423-757-6291.