February 18, Pre-Practice Lake Ouachita, Arkansas
Annie writes:
We are flying home in one week and we have no idea what we are doing with Cooper. I called our airlines to find out how much it would cost to fly him home and they have a no pet fly rule. Great! So now I am looking into other airlines and trying to find a good price so we can fly him home. I think if we can get him home we will leave him there during our next trip. Along with that I made campground reservations for our next trip, worked on our calendar and tried to get more flights booked that we need for March.
Dan writes:
The map shows this to be a highland reservoir – clear and deep, at least from mid-lake down to the dam. We are camped on the south side of the lake, in the south-west corner, fairly far up one of the three river arms that feed into the lake. Along with these there are four or five major creeks, as well as the main body of the lake, studded with dozens of islands.
I launched the boat this morning at the campground and ran west, up the river as far as I could go. Water temperature there: forty three degrees; color: stained; grass: little or none. Turning around I then headed back out towards the river mouth. Here the water had a greener color, and was much clearer. Depth in the main river channel is over a hundred feet, and the deep water continues way up close to shore and far up into the many side branches and pockets. Back in some of the pockets I found water temperatures of forty-seven degrees.
There is grass everywhere in this part of the lake. Too much grass, perhaps. Mainly hydrilla (or elodea), the inside grass line starts at four feet and the grass extends out to about twenty-four feet. It is very difficult to fish anything on the bottom, like a jig, a worm, or a Carolina rig.
I managed to catch eight bass this afternoon. All largemouth. I was thrilled with this, until I got home and found out the length limit on largemouth is sixteen inches. I caught only one of those.