For the most part, David Walker was pretty pleased with how he fished at Lake Dardanelle last week. There was one exception, though.
"A few years ago, we fished an FLW Series event at Dardanelle and I lost the tournament on a big fish that I saw come up and eat my bait, and I jerked the bait away from it," he said. "(On Saturday), with about 15 minutes left to fish, I had a 4-pound class fish come up and eat my jig. I saw him eat it and I did the same thing again – I jerked it away from him. If I hadn't seen him bite, I'm sure I would've been fishing on Sunday."
As a result, he wound up 13th with 48-05, just 5 ounces shy of making the finals.
"Seeing it bite the jig and wanting to get a big bite so bad, it was just a knee-jerk reaction to do that. I'm disappointed, but not devastated by any means. I felt like I fished a good event and made some good choices."
He mainly flipped a half-ounce jig around river willow along the bank or reeds and caught a few fish off wood.
"Any chance I get to throw a jig and get my G. Loomis flipping stick out, I'm in my comfort zone," he said. "Maybe it's stubbornness on my part, but to stand there and keep repeating that motion and only get a few bites – I did catch 20 on day 1 – I had fun with it.
"I think the fishing during the event was a lot tougher than it was during practice from the aspect of number of bites. In terms of the quality of weights during the tournament, I was amazed at how big the weights were."
The Big Bite Lookback, which focuses on the angler who's first out of the final cut at each tour-level event, is brought to you by the great folks at Big Bite Baits.
