River Rat Scott Changed Daily

Photo: FLW Outdoors/Rob Newell Ricky Scott's day-1 pattern revolved around a soybean plant.

Ricky D. Scott of Van Buren, Ark. had never fished Alabama's Lake Wheeler before last week. He'd fished adjacent Pickwick and Wilson, but more important was his experience on his home water – the Arkansas River. That's because conditions at the recent Stren Championship at Alabama's Lake Wheeler resembled the up/down Arkansas River.

In fact, the ability to change every day with the river turned out to be the crucial factor at the Championship, and nobody changed better than Scott. The critical turning point was day 3, when his monster 16-02 bag – which was more than 6 pounds better than the next heaviest – virtually assured a win. He followed it up with a four-fish, 7-06 sack to seal it.

Scott, who fished the FLW Tour in 2004, the Stren Centrals for the past 6 years, and the BFLs since 1995, had never won in either of the three leagues. He did win $35,000 in a past Central Pro-Am event, but this win was by far the biggest of his career.

Here's how he did it.

Practice

Scott arrived at Wheeler the Friday before competition, which gave him nearly 5 days to practice. Here's a day-by-day recap of his practice.

> Friday – Conditions were drizzly with light winds and he caught 10 or 12 keepers fishing close to the launch at Ingalls Harbor. His best five went about 14 pounds. He caught both "Kentuckys" (spots) and largemouths, and his best largemouth weighed a little over 4 pounds.

> Saturday – His second practice day was also cloudy and rainy, and he ventured a little further up the river. He caught nearly as many keepers, but only one decent fish (a 2-pounder).

> Sunday – He went to church in the morning and didn't get on the water until nearly noon. "I went and put in on the lower end of the lake," he noted. "It was probably the wrong day to do that. It was the weekend, and they weren't generating. The water was kind of rising slowly. I wanted to run spinnerbaits on the brush, but there was no wind and no flow, so it was the wrong time to do that."

He bailed on the brush and fished the Elk River for the last hour, where he caught three keepers off wood. "That was enough to kind of start my interest in that," he said.

> Monday – He started back in the Elk on Monday and spent the first half of the day there. It was crowded. The further back he went, the less boats he encountered, but the water also got colder. "I think I found water as cold as 53 degrees." Since it was a "parade" closer to the main lake, the day basically allowed him to eliminate the Elk entirely.

> Tuesday – He spent his final practice day upriver, where he caught lots of 12- to 13 1/2-inch fish, but no good ones.

As the tournament neared, he carried a mix of patterns. "I heard it would probably be tough a tough tournament – maybe 12 pounds a day – so I felt like my best option was to spend all my time not burning gas, and catch as many as I could close to the ramp," he said.

"I could catch them off a few different things – riprap banks, and shallow wood off mud-flat banks, and gravel banks."

He also discovered a key subtlety. "There was one factory around there where they make some kind of soybean product. They load barges on the river with soy products, and all kinds of chaff blows around. It collects on steel walls and trees, and in places where rain hits, it makes it dissolve and start running down the steel walls.

"Huge gizzard shad were feeding on that stuff – there were thousands in the area."

So he entered day 1 with a number of different options. His final decision of where to start would hinge on weather and water level.

Day 1

> Day 1: 5, 14-05 (4th)

Day 1 brought rain, so Scott started the tournament on his soybean fish and caught "one pretty good one." He stayed a while longer, then went to find a limit.

"I covered quite a bit of water and had a limit by 9:30," he said. "I came back (to the soybean fish) later in the day and caught another good fish on a spinnerbait and was able to cull. And a little while after that, I caught a 5-10 largemouth in there and culled again.

"All of those fish were relating to the shad feeding on soy stuff dissolving because of the rain."

Day 2

> Day 2: 5, 8-14
> Total = 10, 23-03 (3rd)

In a sign of things to come, day 2 was totally different. One, it wasn't raining, which took his soybean fish out of play. Two, the water had come up overnight.

"It wasn't raining, and they weren't doing it," Scott said. "The shad were still there (by the factory), which was the odd thing about it. The bass were positioned differently, and I couldn't figure out how to catch them.

"I was talking to my dad after the first day and said, 'There's some big fish around me.' He said not to let that spot kill me. And I'd done that before – wait on the fish. So I wasn't going to stay, but I was going to hit it several times during the day."

He made one pass on the soybean fish then left to cover water. He used a strategy he'd learned from fishing years and years at the Arkansas River.

"I fish all kinds of stuff until I get a bite that keys me into what I need to do for the day," he said of his strategy. "The water had come up overnight, and my first bite was off a shallow, flat stretch that had some gravel.

"As I got to the end of it there was some shallow wood – it had been too shallow to fish the first day. But the way the wind was blowing on day 2, it was pinning some stained water from a creek against the side of the river. So there was a mudline holding tight to the bank."

He concentrated on that mudline, and the wood near it, and caught a limit, but no kickers.

– End of part 1 (of 2) –