On July 5th I left my cabin up north in northern Minnesota and drove 7 hours to Iowa to pick up Tyler for the Under Armour College Bass National Championship. We left for the Arkansas River at Little Rock on the morning of the 6th and 10.5 hours later we finally arrived. We made a quick stop into an awesome tackle shop called “fish N stuff” owned by Vince Miller. It’s probably the best small tackle shop I’ve ever been to, they had everything! Not to mention the fact that Vince was letting us borrow his boat for the week of the tournament, what a guy! It was awesome not having to worry about towing a boat down to the tournament.
As one can imagine, it is much easier writing about a good finish in a tournament than a bad one, so I’m going to keep this one kinda short and sweet…foreshadowing? You betcha.
The first evening we got down there we put the boat in and took a quick stroll down the river to the areas that Tyler fished when they took 4th two years ago on the same pools. Pools 5, 6, & 7 were the tournament waters. After seeing similar grass still in the areas, we felt confident going into practice. First day we went north of little rock, and the 2nd and 3rd day we went south. We stayed in the Little Rock pools all three days of practice, found some stuff, but it would be a grind.
We faced 95-100 degree days without much wind all 5 days we were down there with water temps anywhere from 85-92 degrees. It was steamy... Complaining? Yes and No. That’s just AR in mid-summer, and it resulted in the most difficult fishing conditions I’ve ever fished in; ever… It was a grind everyday, but everyone had to face the same conditions.
The most difficult thing that I found about that river is that it was hard to run a solid pattern that produces bigger fish. You could go down the bank and pitch wood and grass all day long and catch fish, but they had to be 15 inches to keep, which was a back breaker for us. The river was full of grass and wood, but you had to put your trolling motor on high and cover a bunch of water in practice hoping to fall upon better fish. Its kind of like fishing milfoil clumps and mats back home in Minnesota, you can go a long time without a bite and then happen upon a pack of fish, why they are grouped up their? Who knows. Unless to came across said pack of fish, you were hurting (at least we were).
We tried the same weed clumps where Tyler did well two years ago and came up empty handed for keepers. We ended up catching 16 fish on day one with none over 15 inches and had less bites on day 2 with the same results. Teams that did well found small sweet spots in the backwaters and a couple teams found fish along the many rock and wood jetties on the main river.
If I were to fish the tournament all over again I would do a couple things different. We went into the event thinking it was going to be tough, so we didn’t set the hook on anything, unless we couldn’t help it with moving baits. I would set the hook until we caught a keeper fish. We stayed in the Little Rock pool the whole time; I would lock through next time. Not sure if those things would have made a difference, but who knows.
It was a long week in Arkansas, but if I can fish it again next year, I probably will. Even though the fishing was tough, these events are always fun in terms of the many perks the college anglers receive. We had a cool Q & A session with Scott Rook, Kevin Short, Mike McClelland, and James Niggmeyer. Also got to talk with k-pink a little bit about his win in the mighty mississip, which was very cool. Our banquet was in the “fish factory” where they film “The Bassmasters” TV show for the elite series, also very cool.
As you can possibly imagine, I was eager to get back to Minnesota and catch some fish. I’ve been out quite a bit since I’ve been back, fishing lakes such as orchard, chisago, and coon. I’ve got a clubber on chisago this Saturday and an ABA on Coon on Sunday. Coon has been very good to me in the past, but practice wasn’t to stellar, water is down quite a bit and has left my better areas too shallow, we’ll see how it goes, I’ll be sure to give reports. Until then, may your line be tight!
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