Ouachita Pre-Practice Report

The off-limits period has just begun. Find out what the pros saw during pre-practice for the Cup.

Lake Ouachita officially went off-limits to all Forrest Wood Cup competitors on Monday, Aug. 3. That means that from now until the official three-day practice period opens on Aug. 16, no Cup competitor can be on the lake and competitors may only gather information about Ouachita from publicly available resources and fellow qualifiers.

In order to be as prepared as possible before kick-off for the Cup, which is hosted by Visit Hot Springs and the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, on Aug. 20, many of the 50 pros in the field headed over to Hot Springs, Ark., for some pre-practice exploration before the off-limits period began. However, not everyone went. For instance, reigning Cup champ Anthony Gagliardi says that ICAST, other tournaments and family obligations prevented him from making the trip. Wesley Strader, who was also busy with ICAST and a family outing, likewise chose not to pre-practice, though he also had strategic reasons.

“I saw that the water was dropping, and I said, ‘I’m not going to do it,’” says Strader, who’s fished Ouachita in the summer before and knows the basic lay of the land there. “It could all change by the time we get there. It could drastically change. I made my mind up that I’m just going to figure it out when I get there. I don’t know if that helps me or hurts me, but it’s way too early to go over there, in my opinion. It always backfires on me when I do it [pre-practice] anyway.”

Change was one of the most notable characteristics of Lake Ouachita as observed by pros that did pre-practice. There are long-term changes in aquatic vegetation and short-term changes with the water level that will influence this event.

We didn’t speak with all 50 competitors regarding pre-practice, but we called a sample of the field to find out more about how pre-practice went for them.

Adrian Avena

This is my first time ever out there. With that, usually when I go to a new place and I don’t know a lot about it, I do a lot of running around. That’s basically what I did. It seems like from mid-lake to the east you have a lot of grass, and I know just from reading some history on the place that it seems like over the last few years there hasn’t been a whole lot of grass. It’s kind of come back a little bit. There are going to be three or four patterns that are going to be happening. I think you could have a top 10 on just about any one of them – a schooling bite, brush bite, that grass deal and, of course, that shallow bluegill spawn. I just ran a lot of water and tried to see the areas of the lake where that stuff was going on. When I go there for official practice I’ll try to narrow down what I’m going to do. I like how it sets up. It’s one of those places where you can fish on the fly. That’s how I like to fish. I can go out with a bunch of rods on the deck and figure it out as it goes along.

Cody Meyer

It’s brutal, dude. I’ve been there twice, so I have some history on what the lake looks like, anyway. I did a lot of looking around. It’s definitely changed a lot. There’s a lot more grass than last time. But as far as fishing, when I did fish it was really tough. I only caught a handful of fish between two days. Obviously, I wasn’t going at it full bore, but I still fished enough to know that it’s not going to be easy. Really pre-practice for me was just about getting the lay of the lake, figuring out where to start and what to look for, just so I don’t waste a ton of time doing something in practice that I could get done ahead of time. I could’ve gone out there [in official practice], and if I didn’t know where some of the grass was at I could’ve wasted a whole day looking for it. Now, I can go there and fish grass one day and brush piles one day and hopefully just figure out where I can catch a few.

Zack Birge

I made a couple trips. It seems like there’s a lot more grass than there has been in the past – a lot of deep grass. That’s going to make it kind of interesting. The water level has fallen, and it’s still falling. I went back this past weekend, and it looked like it fell another 4 to 6 inches. Right before ICAST it was up at least 2 1/2, maybe 3 feet high. They’re getting it back to normal, but I kind of wish they’d left it up a little bit. I don’t think it (falling water) is necessarily going to change the fishing, but there was a lot more of that water willow grass in the water. Now it’s real slim. I don’t think it’ll change it much, but I think a lot of the fish that were shallow and were biting shallow will be in a little lull for a couple weeks until the water settles. When I go back for official practice, I’m going to look around deep a little more. I’ve got a ton of brush piles marked. I’m going to just kind of pick and choose which ones I really like and kind of have a backup plan.

John Cox

I stopped there for about three days as I was passing through about a month ago. The water was super high. Everything was in the water, everything you could think of … picnic tables, trees flooded up in the woods. There was so much cover to fish. It was awesome. When I just went back, I went for five days. I had my daughters with me, so we practiced and I pulled them around in a tube and we swam. The water dropped and is dropping. It’s almost where I think it’s supposed to be. It looks good. There are all different kinds of cover, from the bank all the way out to 20 or 30 feet of water. There are fish in all different stages. You can pretty much do whatever you want to catch them. But it’s slow, and it’s hot. The bite is not crazy good, but the bite is better than a lot of other places.

Bryan Thrift

I went over there a couple days. My gut feeling was it wasn’t very good at all. I didn’t fish a whole lot. I did a lot of looking. It’s going to be a typical summer bite. I don’t think there are going to be any surprises to it. It’s the third time we’ve been there for a championship, so everybody knows what he’s going to do. I fished that whole entire lake. I didn’t see anything that got me excited.

Matt Arey

I didn’t fish a lot. I did a lot of riding, kind of re-familiarizing myself. This is my fourth trip to Ouachita. I fished two Cups there (one as a co-angler) and a Tour event and have never done really well there. The biggest thing I noticed was how much it’s dropped in a month and a half – a few feet. It’s still dropping every day. I think that’s got the shallow fish, the bream eaters, really screwed up. I cruised the shallows and fished it a bit, and it’s not the deal right now, unless I really missed anything. I looked at the really juicy stuff, and it’s not happening right now. So I spent most of my time idling out deep.

More Details

Tournament details – Click here for the complete Forrest Wood Cup event schedule.

Water level – Track changes in the Lake Ouachita water level here.

News – Stay up-to-date on Forrest Wood Cup events and news at FLWFishing.com.