Jay Yelas had the quality issue licked for last week's Forrest Wood Cup at Lake Ouachita in Arkansas – the 10 fish he brought to the scale averaged better than 3 pounds a piece. It was quality that gave him some trouble and left him one spot outside the Top-10 cut for the final day.
"Something like that's really unusual for August – I had big enough fish to win the tournament, but I couldn't fill a limit," said Yelas, who weighed only five fish combined on days 2 and 3. "I needed something I could fall back on for some smaller fish. That would've at least gotten me to the last day, and you never know what can happen there."
In hindsight, he wishes he'd have put down the topwater baits and big plastics for awhile each day and gone with more of a finesse-style presentation. That's easier said than done, though, when every bite you're getting has some big shoulders.
"I probably should have thrown a dropshot or a shakey-head a little more. I might've been able to catch some of those smaller fish out of the grass when I was working my shallow pattern. I can't look back or second-guess too much, though, because I felt very good about being on the right fish to have a chance to win."
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