Wesley Strader didn’t qualify for the 2007 Forrest Wood Cup at Lake Ouachita. In 2011, when the Cup returned to Ouachita, he finished 22nd.
This year, it appeared he was heading for another mid-pack finish after catching 8-08 on day 1 that had him in 29th place. He rebounded on day 2 with 11-05 to move up to 18th. He tacked on another 10-08 on Saturday, but fell a pound short of making the Top-10 cut and wound up 12th, his best Cup result since placing 8th in 2005.
He didn’t have a keeper at 11 a.m. on day 2, but went to a spinnerbait and targeted shallow stumps and caught nearly three limits worth of keepers.
“I just went and did what I know to do,” he said.
On Saturday, he to an area he’d practiced on, but hadn’t fished during the tournament.
“I had three good keepers, including one close to 4 pounds, in the first 30 minutes,” said Strader, who’d finished 6th in points this season. “I went a long time without a bite after that.”
He finished his limit at 1 p.m., but only had two more bites the rest of the day.
“When I caught that big one, I thought it was fixing to get ugly,” he said. “Later in the morning, they were chasing shad and busting them. They were so shallow that I could see their backs out of the water chasing shad.”
He targeted areas with mostly flat banks where shad were migrating into the backs of pockets in water that was 2 feet or less.
“It was a really shallow area with a ditch in a flat,” he said.
He relied mainly on buzzbaits and a spinnerbait to climb the standings each day.
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