Tourney on Lake Ouachita

[1javelin]

I'll be in (hoping) a tourney on Ouachita in April, and need some advice on where and what.  Any info on abundant bait, predominant tactics to begin with, etc... will be helpful.  I'll only have maybe half an evening to prefish, and then the tourney starts in the morning, so a bad idea to get into it, but can't help myself .  Got that confidence thing that I can catch some fish doen there.  It'll be near or on spawn time then, so I'll be throwing lipless cranks, jerks, jigs, and some topwater for spots, hoping not to lose them to the stripers.  Any other ideas?

[djkimmel]

Buzzbaits to start over the grass beds. I have always heard it is a great jig lake, flipping into the weed edges and holes. May still be something to think about for bigger bass that aren't spawning, or coming in/going out. I've never fished there, so I'm going by things I've read about it or heard from locals when I was fishing in the area on Lake Hamilton.

[SethV]

I fished a BFL regional on Quachita a couple of years ago.  At the time, the lake was way down, plenty of opportunity to tear stuff up.

Here is my journal entry from that event.  Happy reading!

BFL Regional – Lake Ouachita

Practice Day 1:

I put the boat in the water at 6:30 AM....to find a dead cranking battery.  Great.  I quickly jumped it, and was on my way.  I was lucky enough to be staying right next to Chris Torkleson and he offered to lead me through the timber so I could set a path on my GPS for running it in the dark.

I have never been to this lake before, so 2 days did not really give me enough time to feel comfortable getting to know the water.  I had wanted to take a trip down to prefish, but was not able to schedule it in.  Time just flew by.

My first stop was in the Ouachita river, in some pockets that looked great on the map.  When I arrived, I found that there was very little cover, no grass.  Not many baitfish either.  I motored on to another cut, and found a bit more grass.  I started with a Spook, and caught 2 quick short fish and a Pickerel. 

I then ran further up the river....lots of timber and chances to tear stuff up!  I did not find anything to my liking, and worked my way back to the main lake and up the North Fork.  I was alternating between pockets and main-lake structure.  As the day went on, I struggled to catch keepers, but I started to form a weak pattern.  It seemed that the fish were in grass, small fish in the cuts, bigger fish on the main lake.

The weather today was sunny, calm and hot.  At dark with only 1 keeper, I pulled out and headed to Wal-Mart to buy a new cranking battery.  I had to jump it 8 or 9 times during the day.  Can't have that!

Practice Day 2:

Today is a shorter day, because of the meeting, but I planned to squeeze every bit of time out of it that I could.  Weather is a copy of the day before.  Hot, Sunny with light winds. 

I started down lake toward the dam.  Water was clearer, which I liked.  I found some off-shore main lake grassbeds, and started flipping them.  It was not too long, and I had a couple of nice keepers in the boat.  I noticed that when the weeds were submergent to about 1' below the surface in 8' of water I could get bit.

I expanded this pattern to other areas, including a few beautiful grass beds in the North Fork.  It worked.  Although I felt that it was not a strong pattern, I should be able to get 5 in the box. 

Practice time was over, I loaded up at 4 pm and scrambled to make the meeting on time.  Met my day 1 partner and went back to the hotel to do my tackle.


Tx Day 1:

I drew out boat 7 in the morning.  As we sat waiting to take off, it was clear that the weather was much different than practice.  I had never even seen this lake with cloud cover....much less wind!

When they called my number, I headed down lake to my best grass bed.  When I went to make a turn near Crystal....my steering suddenly went limp!  Not good!  I managed to safely slow down, any by plowing water I could turn the wheel 10 or 20 times and make a turn.  We finally made it to our first spot, although I was already worried about getting back.  Not a good thing to have on your mind.

My co-angler had a quick blow-up on topwater, I caught a short.  I was thinking that this may not be too bad even with the cloud cover.  I picked the weeds apart until about 9 AM, then had to move.

I planned my day, with such limited steering to only visit 2 more spots in hopes of having some directional control left for the run home.

At our next spot, we were somewhat protected from the wind, everything looked great, but I could not get bit! 

Stop number 3 at 11 am....this is it for the remainder of the day.  My steering was nearly gone.  I peeked into the hydraulic resivor and it was dry.

I picked up 3 fairly quick shorts, and then lost a nice keeper below the boat.  About 20 minutes later, I lost a 3 lb fish at the boat.  Not what I needed!  The action slowed, and with about 30 minutes left to fish, we both caught a few more shorts.

We limped back to weigh in, both posting zero's.  In 3 years of fishing the BFL as a boater, this is my first zero.  Not a fun experience...but tomorrow is another day!

I took the boat to the Ranger support trailer and they replaced a leaking fitting.  It is so AWESOME to have the Ranger guys come to these tournaments.  That is one of the main reasons I will drive nothing other than Rangers.  At 6:30 I headed back to the room, to get my tackle ready for the next day.

Tx Day 2:

I decided to try to adapt a bit to the cloud cover by throwing some reaction baits over the grass.  I know those fish have not left the grass...I just need to figure out how to get them to eat! 

After carefully running up the lake (I was still a bit nervous about my steering) I set down in the same area as the day before.  My co-angler quickly boated 2 shorts, I boated 3 pickerel.  No help there!

We bounced around from spot-to-spot until at 10:30 I had enough.  Empty livewells, no fish.  Time to go Yankee-style and find some spotted bass.  I had not even prefished for spots, defiantly a mistake.

I recalled a nice rocky point, that would be windblown with the NW wind.  I pulled up, grabbed a deep crank and put a nice keeper in the boat.  After fishing it with the crank, I had 1 more come unbuttoned quickly and that was it.  I decided to drag for them.  Got out my drift sock, set up a drift and we hammered them for the next 3 drifts.  Then, it was like someone just shut the fish off.  After 11:30, we could not get another bite.  Tried similar areas....i think the fish just shut down.  I could see that they quit suspending off of the bottom, and went all the way to the bottom.  Usually, with wind and clouds, those deep (25'-40') fish will keep biting all day.

At the end of the day, all we had to show was our quick run of spots.  I had about 5 lbs for 3 fish.

Tx in review:

I wish I would have had more time to practice and put together a spotted bass pattern.  The morning bite was better for me all week, and I feel very confident that if I could do it all over again, I could have 10 lbs a day fishing spots.  Oh well

Also, I am not sure what caused it, but that steering fluid leak was a scary deal.  Loosing steering at almost 70 mph is not a fun thing to do!  I will now carry spare steering fluid with me just in case I spring a leak so that I can limp home easier.

Rather than going home on Friday night, we decided to stop at Eufaula.  We had a great time on the water Saturday.  My wife and son (20 months old) spent the entire day on the water with me.  It was 41 degrees when we launched at Porum, but the fish were HOT.  Wow, it felt good to smoke 'em like that.  My son, just learning to cast even caught his first one.  He has got the cranking thing figured out, but casting is out of control (what do you expect for a year-and-a-half?).  He pretty much cast into about 20' of water, minding his own business.  He starts crying....i look back and he is upset that something is trying to take his fishing rod away from him!  I helped him, and he put his first fish in the boat.  Only about a 12" spot, but it is one that I will not soon forget.

[1javelin]

Wow Seth, thanks for the journal entry.  That's awesome that you would put that on here.  Sorry to hear about all of the bad luck you had.  I had my steering go out coming across a lake here in a tx also, and that sucks.  I will be looking for a few grass beds, and they might be spawning by then, so I may be doing a lot of sight fishing.  Not very good at it though, so I'll probably stick to the points off the flats, if I can find them.  Thanks again!

[SethV]

Good luck down there!  I really found the lower end of the lake (dam end) to be much cleaner with better grass than up in the rivers.  If I had to do it over again, I would certainly focus my attention on that end of the lake.

By April, you will be post-spawn down there.  Possibly a few stragglers, but I am guessing that it will be over by then.  My bud has a tx this weekend and the water is in the low 50's already.  Lucky dogs....

Seth

[1javelin]

Sounds awesome!!!  So stay towards the lower end of the lake.  Sounds like a plan.  No idea where we are taking off from though.  Was looking over the map, and wow!   40,000 acres.  Biggest lake I have been on is Muskegon, at 4,000 acres.  10 times that size, and I thought Muskegon was huge.  Am I correct in assuming that the lower end near the dam will also be a big spot producer, with the current and all?  Probably not much on a Sunday, but maybe.  By the way, what won the tx you were in Seth?

[SethV]

15 lbs a day is pretty good in a multi day event.  Winner James Niggemeyer (Elite Series Pro) had 20+ on the third day.

Not too huge of a lake (compared with other southern impoundments), but there is lots of shoreline & islands.  Do you have the lake contours on your GPS?  If you run uplake from Mountian harbor, watch out for lots of wood in the water.

Seth

[1javelin]

No, don't even have GPS on my boat.  Might try to use my Garmin handheld unit, but probably not much help.   I do like fishing wood though, a nice change from all this green stuff.  I'll let you all know how it turns out.

[champion_206]

I fished a Champion owners championship there in 04, was won down by the darn, on jigs, I would start there if the fish are not in the back pockets of coves yet, depends on the water temp. Its a beautiful lake and scenery, we stayed at Harbor Mountain Resort in Mt Ida  Good Luck

[Durand Dan]

If you have a chance try and hook up with somebody from Benton. They seem to win all the tournament there. You might want to check out Harman Outdoors in Benton for info on whats workin