February 17, Pre-Practice – Lake Ouachita, Arkansas
Annie writes:
We left Florence, Alabama last night around 6:00 pm. We had almost 400 miles ahead of us. The first 150 went rather quickly. The next 250 did not. We had been up since 3:00 am, so I finally pulled in to a rest area to catch a couple hours sleep.
I started driving again around 6:30 mainly because I was so cold and uncomfortable I figured I might as well drive. We got into Lake Ouachita area around noon. We checked out five campgrounds and only one of them had a bath house with running water. That made our choice easy. Apparently it is off season right now and the campgrounds do not fully open until March. We found a nice site set up the tent and got the great off season price of $8.00 a night. By 6:30 we were exhausted and called it a night.
Dan writes:
The next FLW tournament is here on Lake Ouachita, near Hot Springs, Arkansas. I’ve never seen the lake before. We are here for a few days pre-practicing because I will be fishing a B.A.S.S. event in Alabama the week prior to the FLW. That leaves me only two days to practice immediately prior to this event. My goals therefore for the three or four days I have here now are:
To just look at as much of the lake as possible, and note the differences between the many different areas;
To identify areas that have higher concentrations of fish (by catching some, obviously);
To make some assumptions as to what the fish will be doing when I return next month;
To select just one area of the lake in which to fish upon my return. When I come back I will not have time to run all over the lake. I must decide now the area in which I will fish during the tournament, and then spend my two official practice days trying to figure how to catch fish in that area that I’ve already picked out.