Cup Practice Begins

50 pros have three days to put together a $500,000 game plan

Welcome to Hot Springs, Ark., and the Forrest Wood Cup. Today, Sunday, marks the start of the official three-day practice period for the 2015 Cup. Right now is when pros start to piece together the puzzle that is summertime fishing on Lake Ouachita.

To find out how the pros are preparing for this championship event, I head down to Brady Mountain Resort way too early in the morning to pester a few of them before they back their boats into the lake.

I find out that for some pros, this morning is the first time they’ve launched a boat in Lake Ouachita this season – or ever. For others that made pre-practice trips, it’s the first time they’ve seen the lake since it went off limits earlier this month.

A lot has changed since then. Most notable is the water level, which has dropped something like 6 feet over several weeks.

Also, relatively speaking, the weather is mild compared to the weeks before off-limits when the thermometer was tickling triple digits. It’s about 70 degrees when I arrive at the ramp at 5:10 a.m., with overcast skies forecast for the morning and a steady, cool breeze. It should make for a nice day for fishing, albeit challenging.

FLW College Fishing champ Patrick Walters of the University of South Carolina, along with his dad, Todd, is the first to arrive at about 5:40 a.m. He spent two and a half weeks on the lake earlier this summer and says the water was up to the park benches at the ramp when he was here.

You can see the benches (far left) and the exposed shoreline near the ramp in this photo.

Walters says he’s changing things up a bit for the official practice period.

“I’ll run some old water and check on some of that stuff,” he says, “but it’s supposed to be overcast all week and rainy, and it was sunny in pre-practice.”

I snap a few photos, and then the Walters duo quickly zooms off into the gray light of early morning.

As I wait for other anglers to arrive, I chat with fishing guide Randy Umphers of R U Fishing as he preps his center-console boat for a striper outing.

“It’s early, isn’t it?” he asks.

Definitely.

Umphers is interested in the TBF Junior World Championship going on at Lake Hamilton concurrently with the Cup, so I tell him what’s up with that event. Then he describes just how good the largemouth fishing was on Ouachita back in the spring.

“You couldn’t avoid the 3- to 5-pounders in spring,” he says.

I wonder who the heck would want to avoid them.

Arkansas pro Larry Nixon, who’s sure to be a crowd favorite this week, is the next to arrive.

“I’m going to check some stuff that I thought was good but isn’t,” he says.

I’m not really sure what that means, except I assume that Nixon can already tell by the water level that some of his patterns are hopeless. He’s definitely interested in gauging the water level as he readies his Ranger.

Nixon tells me that he hasn’t been fishing Lake Ouachita for very long – only about 15 tournaments. This guy really has been fishing for a long time if 15 tournaments on one lake isn’t much.

Troy Morrow rolls in next at about 6 a.m. The Georgia pro is a great FLW Fantasy Fishing pick in these tough summertime tournaments on clear, deep reservoirs. If you don’t believe me, look at his Forrest Wood Cup track record. He’s got a few top 10s.

No surprise, Morrow has two graphs on the dash, another on the floor and a MarCum underwater camera. He’s going to do a whole lot of looking, but he’s also got a couple of possible patterns that he identified in pre-practice that he’s going to test out today. What he learns out there on day one of practice will direct him where to go the remaining days. Thus, he’s going to log a lot of hours.

“It’s going to be a long day,” he says.

As I part ways with Morrow, FLW Associate Editor Jody White texts me. He’s at the Crystal Springs boat ramp waiting on Zack Birge. White is riding along with Birge for a practice photo gallery, which you can check out later this evening at FLWFishing.com.

He tells me that Chris McCall, Adrian Avena, Luke Clausen and Jacob Wheeler are all at Crystal Springs. How’s that for a roster of hammers?

A couple more striper guys pull up to the ramp just ahead of Bridgford Foods pro Matt Stefan and his co-angler partner and fellow Bridgford pro-staffer Chad Randles. Randles finished 11th in the Co-angler of the Year race and won the Tour opener on Lake Toho. He’s not a bad practice partner to have in the boat at the Cup.

For Stefan, today is all about finding what direction to go.

“I’m going to try to find some new water,” he says, “and expand on pre-fishing. I’ll fish a little shallow, a little deep and a little in between. We’re just hoping to get a few bites to point us in the right direction. We’ll try a little of everything.”

I catch Minnesota pro Jim Moynagh walking down to his boat. He must’ve snuck in while I was calculating the cost of Morrow’s electronics package. I cut him off and ask for the scoop.

Always a little secretive and reserved, Moynagh isn’t willing to reveal much about his practice plan, though he doesn’t really have one yet either. Moynagh didn’t pre-fish.

“My plan is to do whatever I can to find fish and catch them,” he says, stating the obvious goal of every practice period. “I’ll fish shallow half the time and deep half the time and see what I like the best.”

Somewhere in the mix, Shin slips through too. I grab a quick shot of him and scurry off the ramp to get out of the way.

After that, on a tip from Morrow, I leave the ramp to make a short drive down a windy, wooded road to another ramp out on Brady Point where a lot of anglers are supposedly launching. I pass Peter Thliveros on his way in, contemplate turning around to get a photo of he and his son, Nick, for an upcoming website story, but decide I need to make the most of my time and keep cruising.

There’s not much activity out on the point, but I find Scott Wiley of Alabama pulling the cover off his spotless silver Ranger. Wiley is staying in that houseboat that you see in the background of the photo below. Convenient, huh?

“I’m going to run around and look at some stuff I saw in pre-practice,” Wiley says. “I came over for four days. The water was up 6 more feet then. But it’ll be all right.”

After that, I don’t see another angler anywhere, so I hop back in the Ram and am about to haul out of there when Tracy Adams rolls into the parking lot in his jacked-up pick-up.

I cut him off at the ramp.

“I came out here during off-limits,” Adam reports. “It was lousy. You could catch them, but they were all little. I wish it had some docks or something – a little overhead cover.”

“Good Carolina-style bass fishing, you mean?” I ask him. He’s from Lake Norman country in North Carolina, and Norman is plumb full of docks.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “I’m staying on Lake Hamilton [which is covered in docks], and it hurts my feelings every morning when I look out there.”

Adams’ baits run the gamut from power to finesse, topwater to bottom fishing. I inspect his equipment and learn that a loop knot is the best way to tie on a Brian’s Bees Prop Bee to achieve the best action. That’s lesson No. 1 for the week.

Adams backs in and parks his trailer next to Clark Wendlandt’s.

“You can’t beat Clark to the lake,” he says, shaking his head.

Here's a shot of Wendlandt’s Ranger Trail trailer. That's all I see of him this morning.

After that, I chat for a few minutes with Lee Black. The Alabama co-angler hauled his own boat up for practice. I like the dedication. Sorry, no photos.

I head back across to the original ramp to snap a few scenic photos and some shots that capture the low water level. It’s about 7 a.m., and I assume everyone is in the water at this point when Dave Lefebre rumbles up in his black Quigly 4X4 van with its neon green lettering.

Just a few days ago, Lefebre and I chatted about the Sworming Hornet Fish Head Spin for a story in FLW Bass Fishing magazine. He thinks it’ll be a big-time player here on Ouachita this week. No surprise there. Scott Martin used one, in part, when he won the Cup here in 2011.

Lefebre has six spinning rods on his deck.

“All finesse gear,” I say.

“Don’t call me a sissy on the FLW website. The good stuff is in here,” he replies, motioning to his rod locker. 

“What’s the plan for practice?” I ask.

“I don’t really have one. Should I?”

Lefebre tells me he didn’t pre-practice, though he would’ve enjoyed flipping flooded willows for a few days. The problem with pre-practice, in this instance, is that he knew the lake was falling and that all the patterns would be changing. Pre-practice, in his eyes, was a waste of time.

I wonder about that a little bit. There are a lot of brush piles in Lake Ouachita and only so many hours in three days of official practice to scan around and check them. If brush is key to this tournament, pre-practice might have been crucial for success.

But then again, some of the best anglers in the world – Dave Lefebre obviously among them – are masters at figuring out fishing patterns on the fly. Maybe having a clear head and open mind are the keys to success this week.

As Lefebre walks out to his boat (OK, he wades out, and I just stand there and watch. Sorry, Dave.) I gather my gear and head on up the winding road. I grab a quick breakfast at a local diner and chat with some local anglers about fishing and the tournament. It’s nice to be in bass fishing country, where people are jazzed about the Cup. Yet, there’s a lot of work to be done. Someone is going to be crowned a champion this week. Someone is going to win $500,000. Someone is going to win the Forrest Wood Cup. And it’s all just getting started.

 

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