David Walker practiced for 10 days leading up to the Forrest Wood Cup at Arkansas' Lake Ouachita – the most pre-fish time he'd ever put in for a tournament. A lot of good it did him.
The Tennessee veteran finished 79th in the 81-angler field. Mechanical issues prevented him from weighing in on day 1 and forced him to take a bagel that put him at the very bottom of the standings, but that didn't really matter: He didn't have any fish to take to the scales anyway.
He'll never put himself through a marathon practice period like that again.
"I think it was the worst thing for me, and it had a lot to do with not being used to that much practice," he said. "If I'd been accustomed to that, I think I would have done better.
"But by the time it was over, I was sick of it. The fishing was poor, and it was under the worst conditions possible with the heat and everything. But I stayed out there because of that million-dollar carrot."
The lower unit on his boat failed him at about 2:30 on day 1.
"I still had time to catch something at that point, but that was the final nail in my coffin. I just said, 'Let's get out of here and come back out and try it again tomorrow.'''
Day 2 was slightly better – he caught two keepers for 2-05 and moved up two places.
Now he'll shift his focus back to the FLW Series Eastern Division, where he's coming off a 3rd-place finish at Dardanelle in May and is 12th in the Angler of the Year (AOY) standings. That circuit visits Lake Champlain the first week of September, and then Pickwick in mid-October.
But before that, he'll compete in an FLW Redfish Series Western Division tournament with his father-in-law, Jeff Simes of Florida. They're 4th in the Team of the Year race.
"I think I'm probably the best redfish fisherman in Tennessee," he joked.
