Anglers who fared the best in last week's Forrest Wood Cup either focused on the top few feet of water or went down 15 feet and deeper. Arkansas' Lake Ouachita just wasn't offering up much in between on a full moon in the middle of August.

Runner-up Randall Tharp and 3rd-place finisher Mark Rose were at opposite ends of that spectrum. Tharp enticed all of his weigh-in fish to the surface while Rose, who's become one of the best at offshore fishing over the past few years, pulled all but a couple of his from water that was well over twice as deep as he is tall.



2nd: Randall Tharp

> Day 1: 5, 16-00
> Day 2: 5, 13-01
> Day 3: 5, 12-05
> Day 4: 5, 15-01
> Total = 20, 56-07

Tharp ended up 4 1/2 pounds behind winner Scott Martin. He watched the weight that would've negated much or all of that deficit swim away on day 1, when he popped a big bag that could've been spectacular if not for several lost bruisers.

He went to Ouachita for some pre-practice immediately after last month's FLW Tour regular-season finale at Pickwick with the notion to work a bedding-bream pattern in shallow water. He found precisely what he was looking for on that trip, and it was still happening when he returned for official practice on the weekend prior to the event.

"I went out deep and tried other stuff and I could catch fish other ways," he said, "but if I caught a keeper, it was a 13- or 14-incher. There were a lot of 3- and 4-pounders up shallow."

He had four primary areas and fished each multiple times during the day. All were rife with spawning bluegill and they also had some shad action out toward the main lake.

"I've never seen a lake with that many bluegill, and when they'd get up in the water column, so would the bass. The fish would bust those shad up early, then a herd of them would move to the bank and start feeding on the bluegill.

"If they weren't there on my first pass I'd come back later, and whenever I'd actually see bass, I knew it was going to happen. There were times when I could see five 3- to 5-pounders."

> Topwater gear: 6'6" medium-heavy Falcon Cara rod, Shimano Chronarch MG50 casting reel (6.2:1 ratio), 30-pound Power Pro braided line with 6-foot Gamma co-polymer leader, Brian's Prop Bee # 3 (baby bream).

> He caught one schooler each day that ended up going to the scale on a Lucky Craft Gunfish. "I threw that on long points," he said. "When those schools would come up, you'd usually only have 20 or 30 seconds to get it done."

Main factor in his success – "Just staying in the high-percentage places."

Performance edge – "I'd say my EverStart batteries. We were really limited with the time we had to charge them each day, and I used the onboard charger plus four others to make sure I got every bit I could. That made a big difference because some guys were out of juice by the end of the day, but I wasn't."



BassFan
Photo: BassFan

Consistency was Mark Rose's trademark at Ouachita as he achieved a high finish without topping the 15-pound mark on any of the 4 days.

3rd: Mark Rose

> Day 1: 5, 14-09
> Day 2: 5, 12-08
> Day 3: 5, 14-04
> Day 4: 5, 9-10
> Total = 20, 50-15

Rose primarily concentrated on ledges in 15 to 17 feet of water, but he also had some brushpiles in 22 feet and caught a few key topwater fish that just happened to make themselves vulnerable while he was in the vicinity.

"I had several different things going," he said. "A lot of it was actually just fishing the sides of points that had a hard bottom. For that deal, I had four different places."

A 5-pounder on day 1 propelled him to his best sack of the tournament. He never busted a truly big bag, but consistency kept him in the hunt the rest of the way.

A Carolina-rigged worm and a spoon produced his ledge fish, He employed a wacky-rigged worm in the brushpiles and the topwater fish were a bonus.

"Those were fish that I didn't know I had. I'd see them busting a bunch of shad and it'd make me want to fish for them."

> Carolina-rig gear: 7-foot heavy-action Kistler Helium LTA rod, unnamed casting reel (7:1 ratio), Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon line (15-pound main line and 12-pound, 3 1/2-foot leader), glass bead (green), unnamed 3/4-ounce egg sinker, unnamed 2/0 hook, 4 1/2" Strike King Perfect Plastic KVD finesse worm (green-pumpkin).

> Spoon gear: 7'11" heavy-action Kistler Z-Bone rod, unnamed casting reel, 20-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon, 1 1/4-ounce Strike King Sexy Spoon (sexy shad).

> Worm gear: 6'6" medium-action Kistler Z-Bone spinning rod, unnamed spinning reel, 6-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon, unnamed 1/8-ounce weight, unnamed size 1 hook, wacky-rigged unnamed finesse worm (green-pumpkin).

> Topwater gear: 7' medium-heavy Kistler Z-Bone rod, unnamed casting reel, unnamed 17-pound monofilament line, 1/8-ounce Strike King Pro Model buzzbait (white).

Main factor in his success – "The combination of my tackle setup, my electronics and my understanding of ledge fishing."

Performance edge – "My Lowrance HDS 10 with StructureScan and DownImaging. It was critical for finding those fish."

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