Ouachita River FLW

Day 1: Well, despite the discouragement of practice, today turned out pretty well after all. Couch and I ran north and locked up into the upper pool in Arkansas. It was an extremely long run – probably around 90 minutes overall. The cold temps and a little rain made it even worse.

I was really thanking my lucky stars to have my Fish Hedz mask for the run. If you haven't checked one of these out yet, you probably should. You'll wonder how you ever survived without one.

We started the day way back in a backwater off a very shallow cut from the main channel. We could barely get back there. With the current that was running out of there I doubt anyone will get in there tomorrow. I started off fast, with three bites in the first 15 minutes or so. I lost the second bite, but I think it was a pickerel anyway.

Couch commented that if I caught another fish, he was going to ask to borrow a bait. It slowed down a bit after that, but on another pass through the same area I stuck and boated a solid 3-pounder. Couch said, "I'm ready for a bait now!"

I obliged and sure enough he started getting bites as well. He caught a few shorts, lost a few keepers and missed a few bites. I was more fortunate and boated my fourth keeper in the same area.

We ran to another area where I managed to land my limit fish. Tony still didn't have a fish in the box, but he was a really good sport about it. He's been around long enough to know that's how it goes sometimes. He didn't really let it get in his head. I backed off a little bit and made sure he could fish whatever pace he wanted, and he ended up catching two keepers and losing another nice keeper in that area.

We ran back to the area where we started the day, but couldn't get another bite. On our run back to that area, I screwed up royally and somehow allowed my $250 rainsuit jacket to exit the boat somewhere in the river. I realized this about the time the huge thunderstorm showed up. I was incredibly lucky that Couch had a spare jacket in his boat, or it would have been a miserable ride back.

My limit weighed in at 9-02, good for 7th place on the co-angler side. My partner for day 2 is Morizo Shimizu from Japan. It was difficult to communicate with him to find out about tomorrow, but I talked to his day 1 co-angler and got an idea what we'd be doing. I should be excited about 7th place, but honestly I'm just concerned about tomorrow - last year it seemed like I had a day 2 curse.

My hot bait for day a was a Netbait Baby Paca Craw in black/blue. My roommate Mike Jones got his flipping bites in practice on this bait and clued me into it. Special thanks to Larry Rosser at AlabamaLakes.com for
sending us a box of these baits via overnight delivery so we might have them for the tournament. They really paid off for us.

Day 2: Today started off very badly. Shimizu had me meet him at his hotel at 6:00 a.m. The line to the ramps on Day 1 was ridiculous and I felt like being boat number 2, we might be late getting in the water. I tried to suggest this to Shimizu, but it was hard to communicate and I'm not sure he understood me. I told him I would show up early in case he wanted to go earlier.

I showed up at his hotel at 5:20 am, but he got his stuff ready and we didn't get out of the hotel until 6:00 am. Sure enough, we watched the beginning of the boat takeoff from the road leading to the ramp. We got to hear them call our boat number while we were sitting in the truck. We didn't take off until boat number 85. We pulled into our starting area, a small (very small) backwater pond, only to find six other boats already there.

As we were trolling back to the back of the pocket to find a little water to fish, I watched four keepers being landed by the other boats that beat us in there. We fished around in there for maybe an hour without a single bite.

We ran to a second area – yet another backwater pond. It was very slow going at first, but once Shimizu changed techniques and started cranking isolated trees and wood, he started getting bit. He landed three fish, including a nice 5-pounder, and missed another fish that bit right at the boat. Cranking trees like that is very difficult to do from the back of the boat.

It's hard to get good casting angles on cypress trees and after about a million snags, I felt bad for slowing him down. I had to quit cranking after a while. I tried everything I could, but finished the day without a single bite.

As it turned out, I would have only needed 2-14 to make the cut. Very frustrating. But the good news is that I only fell to 17th place, so I got a decent check and a pile of points to get back into the Championship mix.

Now we're on to the fun half of the season. I feel great about the next three tournaments – especially the upcoming event at Beaver Lake. Let's hope for some cold weather in Arkansas the next few weeks to delay the spawn until after this tournament.

I caught seven or eight keepers today and I ended up 18th. I stayed in D'Arbonne – the mot popular place here. I was flipping a Reaction Innovations Smallie Beaver with a 1/4-ounce Kanji tungsten weight, 8' Lamiglas flipping stick and 20-pound fluorocarbon.

Today, I just got a little better bites that I did yesterday. I got a 3 1/2-pound spotted bass. There were some nice spots biting today, and I had one other nice one on.

I had a fun time at this tournament. I caught a lot of drum again today – probably about 15 of them. They were 5 to 20 pounds. I thought they were big spots every time.

I'm extremely happy with my finish. Anytime you get a $10,000 check, you've gotta be happy.

The key to my bites was I was fishing heavy current. I was fishing a slough, but it had current running through it. I was fishing anywhere from a foot deep to about 10 feet.

I did terrible today. I had three bites and caught one fish. I don't even know where I ended up. That's how bad it was. I was in the first flight, so I just left to get out of the way.

It was frosty this morning, and it was a bluebird sky. They still caught them again up north. I didn't practice up there and didn't know where to go, so I stayed down there where I was fishing.

I was throwing a Zoom Brush Hog – flipping cypress trees and button willows. I was just trying to fish the edges, where it drops off from the flats from 2 feet to about 6 feet of water.

My practice was fair. I caught a couple of real good fish in practice and felt fairly decent about the area I was fishing. I went back in there today and I was all by myself, but never got a bite. I left and went to another area I found in practice. I caught two there that weighed 6 pounds.

Everybody said they weren't catching them, but they were and a lot of guys caught them today. It looks like most of the big bags came from up north. Most all the field went north this morning – or at least a whole bunch did.

I'll return to my first spot tomorrow again, even though I didn't get bit there today. The size of the fish I caught there in practice were quality. Those fish haven't left, I know that.

It rained today, and it hailed and the sun shined – we had a little bit of everything. We'll see what the weather does tonight – it looks like something else is blowing in.

Practice was fairly decent – I caught three to six keepers a day. I fished mostly way north, but I decided to not go up there today. I'm having some gas issues – I have water in my gas and I think I got some bad gas – so I caught some fish closer to launch. I had a limit early and started culling at 10:00.

I hear there's been a big bag caught. I weighed 10 1/2 pounds today, and that just keeps me in the hunt – trying to get those 50th-place checks.

I think most guys here are pitching and flipping jigs and soft plastics. There's probably some crankbait fish too.

You're allowed to lock, but I think they held the lock for a while this morning and some guys were real mad. They held it for all the flights, I heard.

My plan for tomorrow is to go back and do the same thing I did today. I'll put my head down and try to catch five. I was the first flight today, so I'm the last flight tomorrow.

This will probably be my shortest Big Sticks entry of the season – at least I hope so. There isn't much to report, because not much has happened. Practice has really sucked.

I've been here for 3 days, fishing with FLW pro Jeffrey Thomas. Sunday was very slow. We caught a fish here and a fish there, and ended up with 4 keepers total for the day. There was little rhyme or reason to what we found, so it was hard to gain confidence in any one thing.

The highlight of the day was when I snagged a behemoth paddlefish somewhere in the 80- to 100-pound neighborhood. We messed around with that monster for a while - I even got her to the surface 3 times before she wrapped the line around a stump and pulled off. She was so big it was almost scary.

Monday was absolutely terrible. It was overcast and cool and later poured down rain on us. We fished hard all day and covered a ton of water. We tried everything that made any sense at all, but at the end of the day we hadn't had a single stinking bite. Any little bit of confidence we gained yesterday evaporated today.

Tuesday wasn't much better. Jeffrey caught a few small keepers, but again no consistent area, pattern or presentation was discernible. It's so hard to learn or establish anything when you can't generate more bites than this.

My roommate Mike Jones got some bites each day in practice, so I'm going to have to rely a lot on what he learned as well. If I do well on his stuff down here I'll take him out for lobster.

I'm paired with Tony Couch today. Somehow we managed to draw boat 200, so we'll be sitting around in the freezing cold and rain for as long as possible before takeoff. The weather forecast looks pretty terrible. It sounds like Couch is on next to nothing right now, but that's probably true for most of the field. As always, some guys will sack them up pretty good, but look for most of the field to struggle pretty mightily today.

Personally, I'm hoping for one fish. I'll fish hard and I won't give up - I just hope that's enough to get the job done.