Day 2: 9 pounds, 8 ounces
As rough as day one had been,
day two made it look like a cakewalk.
Davis was more dialed in with his
big worm and knew how slow he had
to fish, so he set up a milk run of
about five key brush piles to start
and end his day. He stopped at new
ones in between, though he could
really only hit a little more than a
dozen each day because of how
slowly he had to fish.
The game plan was solid, but the
execution failed him again.
“I lost two big fish right off the
bat,” Davis says. “No joke; they were
in the net and jumped out. My mar-
shal looked at me and said he’d
never seen anything like it before.”
By failing to capitalize on the early
window, Davis had to grind out bites
the rest of the day. He had only four
fish with minutes left to fish.
“I knew I had to get five,” Davis
recalls. “So I sat down and rigged up
a Ned rig with a Nichols Toadstool. I
didn’t know if a 13-incher or what
would eat it, but I knew something
would. I caught a 2-pounder almost
instantly, and then I lost a third big
one.”
Davis figured the final lost fish sig-
naled the end of his tournament.
Turns out, the 2-pounder was just
enough, and he squeaked into the
top 10 by 1 ounce.
38
A big reason for his struggles,
he’d eventually discover, related to
how fast he was fishing. If the fish
are really biting, winning in a brush
pile tournament often means hitting
as many piles as possible in a day to
try and keep upgrading. That didn’t
work at Ouachita, where the bass
were far from active.
What Davis came to find out was
that he had to slow down. A lot.
“I normally like to start with a
swimbait, but they just wouldn’t
come up for it,” Davis says. “So I
switched to the Mister Twister Mag
12 BUZZ Worm in plum apple on a
1/2-ounce head. Even then, I’d pull it
over a branch, let it fall to the bot-
tom and then just let it sit for 10 sec-
onds before moving it again.”
He finally got his second bite (and
first keeper) at 11 a.m. It was a 3 1/2-
pounder. Davis’ next move earned
him his second keeper on a swim-
bait. With an hour left in the day
those were the only two bass swim-
ming in his livewell.
According to Davis, the fish were
feeding heavily at night, but they
weren’t fasting all day. There was a
window of activity first thing in the
morning and another feeding win-
dow in late afternoon. He capitalized
on the latter to avoid a disastrous
round.
“I went from two fish to a limit
real quick when that window opened
the last hour,” Davis recalls.
That limit wasn’t much, weight-
wise, but with such a tough bite
going on it actually had him in 12th
to start the event.
FLWFISHING.COM I FALL 2018