Kirk Smith of Edmond, Okla. brought a five-bass limit to the scale Saturday weighing 19-15 to win the three-day Lake Dardanelle Plains Division Toyota Series event out of Russellville, Ark. His three-day total of 15 bass weighing 51-03 earned him the win by a 6-pound margin over 2nd-place angler Zach King of Clarksville, Ark., and earned Smith the top payout of $36,104.
Smith said he considers himself an offshore and electronics geek, a combo that helped him blow it out on Lake Dardanelle. While the majority of the field’s success seemed to go up and down throughout the event, Smith had a pattern like no one else that allowed him to lay off early the first two days and still be leading by an ounce.
“I never knew what I had (with my pattern) because I was letting up on days 1 and 2,” said Smith. “That final day, I absolutely unleashed the fury on them and just mashed them as hard as I could. Even I’m impressed with what I had.”
In practice, Smith said he was trying to find secret backwaters like many other pros, but it just wasn’t happening. Yet, while idling out of a pocket, he inadvertently found something most people came across but simply overlooked.
“I was watching my side-imaging and noticed this little underwater point of grass and that’s when it all started,” said Smith. “I threw a waypoint on it and said, ‘huh, that looks good,’ but I didn’t know exactly where it was. So, I got up on the trolling motor and realized it was 15-20 feet off the bank. That’s when a lightbulb went off. The guys were either on the bank or the guys offshore were way offshore, out too deep. I knew no one else would be fishing that.”
Fishing mainly in the Shoal Bay and Thompson Creek area, Smith found grass points and isolated stumps with grass that were far off the bank but not deep, and were not getting hit by anyone else. Best of all, Smith said he realized on day 3 those spots were reloading thanks to the falling water, so it was just a matter of precisely hitting them.
Much like pros do over open water, Smith said he’d get in an area and troll around while watching his electronics for stumps and isolated grass patches. When he saw one, and if he saw a fish on it, he could nearly call his shot tossing a prototype 1/2-ounce BOOYAH swim jig with a Zoom Super Chunk trailer (both black-and-blue).
“I’m not much of a swim jig guy,” says Smith. “I’m a 3/4-ounce, 25-feet of water guy. But getting that bait down there and swimming it, getting kind of aggressive with it was a big, big thing.”
The results spoke for themselves, with Smith catching a limit before 9 a.m. all three days of the tournament.
“It’s been a magical week,” said Smith. “I was talking to a buddy from the Muddy Water Mob before the week. I told him I’m feeling warm and fuzzy about this tournament. I can’t explain it, because when I saw this tournament on the schedule this year … Lake of the Ozarks, I can compete. Grand Lake, I can compete. Dardanelle, I thought I could just survive. So, winning this is just amazing.”
Here are the final totals for the Top 10:
1. Kirk Smith: 51-03
2. Zach King: 45-03
3. Theron Caldwell: 44-06
4. Bruce Parsons: 38-07
5. Wayne Dixon: 37-12
6. Jeff Kriet: 37-00
7. Fred Roumbanis: 35-13
8. Andy Newcomb: 35-05
9. Chip Hawkins: 34-09
10. B.J. Miller: 28-12
