Knight Slays Ouachita
by Rob Newell
FLW PRESS RELEASE
by Rob Newell
FLW PRESS RELEASE
For the last decade, Brad Knight has had the same recurring
dream at night. Although the dream has varying versions, scopes and backdrops,
the theme is always the same: He is in contention to win a big bass tournament.
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| Sticking to his guns kept Brad in the same area the entire tournament. (Photo: FLW) |
And then he wakes up to his normal life as a part-time manager
of Wartburg Pharmacy in Wartburg, Tenn., and all the intense feelings of
anticipation are chased into the shadows by reality.
Knight again experienced that same dream on Saturday night.
Except this time when he awoke, it was reality: He really was in contention to
win a big tournament, the biggest of its kind – the 2015 Forrest Wood Cup.
“When I woke up, the first thing I said was, ‘If I’m dreaming,
please don’t wake me up. I want to know how this ends,’” he added.
On Sunday afternoon, Knight stood before a packed house in the
Bank of the Ozarks Arena in Hot Springs, Ark., hoisting a Forrest Wood Cup over
his head. He now knows how his dream ends.
“I’ve dreamed about this moment for 15 years,” Knight said on stage. “And if I’m dreaming now, please don’t wake me up.”
Knight’s dream manifested into reality on Lake Ouachita in the
very back end of Big Blakely Creek. For four days he seined a 250-yard stretch
of creek ditch that snaked out of the woods and through a vast, shallow flat.
As the small creek channel meandered through the flat, it brushed up against
the bank in several areas, creating classic channel-swing banks that were
sweetened with laydowns, logs and pieces of brush. The bottom of the creek
ditch was about 8 feet deep, and the shallow flats around it were 2 to 3 feet
deep.
Knight started the tournament in Big Blakely Creek because it
reminded him of the creek ends on his home lake, Watts Bar, and it’s the place
where he got the most bites in practice.
“I just felt comfortable in there,” he says. “It looked like one
of those typical deals back home where resident bass live but don’t get fished
for all summer because everyone is fishing deep.”
On day one, Knight used a black 1/4-ounce Boogerman buzzbait to
pluck the unpressured “low hanging fruit” from the area and sack up 14 pounds,
4 ounces to start the event in fifth place.
“The first day was easy pickings,” Knight says. “The fish were
green and unpressured and pretty easy to catch.”
On the second day, the fishing started to get a little tougher,
mainly because fishing pressure and boat traffic had begun to impact the area.
Not only had Knight found the fish in the back of Big Blakely, but so had Mark
Daniels Jr. and Brandon Cobb, and they were catching plenty of fish, too.
Daniels opened the event in ninth, and Cobb in third.
With spectators and media out in full force on day two, the
fragile area became even smaller.
“Once the easy ones had been caught, things tightened up in
there pretty quickly,” Knight says. “I knew the meat and potatoes lures were
not going to work anymore.”
With that in mind, Knight dug into his bag of tricks from
another one of his home lakes: Old Hickory.
“On Old Hickory, the bottom is so silted that bass get conditioned
to traditional lures that sort of punch into the silt and disappear into the
bottom,” he says. “So we pitch a drop-shot on even the shallowest targets
there. Instead of disappearing into the muck, that worm just suspends there
right next to the object, giving the bass a different look. And that’s exactly
what I did here. I caught a lot of my fish off logs and root wads that were as
shallow as 2 feet on a drop-shot.”
Knight’s shallow-shotting rig consisted of a 6-inch
straight-tail worm on a straight-shank hook fished on a 10-pound-test Gamma
fluorocarbon leader tied to 10-pound-test Gamma Torque braid.
Another key component to Knight’s success in the back of Big
Blakely was marking waypoints on underwater targets as he fished.
“As the sun got higher those first two days, I would discover
submerged logs, brush and especially root wads that I couldn’t see until I got
right over them,” he details. “I would mark those objects on GPS so the next
time through I could cast to them before getting on top of them, and that made
a huge difference as the tournament went on. I basically added another 12 to 15
targets to my area that way, and some key fish came off those submerged pieces
of wood.”
Though fishing pressure seemed to be the one thing that might
sink Knight’s chances at winning the Cup, the fish replenished enough each day
for him and his nearby competitors.
On days two and three he weighed in 14 pounds and 12 pounds, 1
ounce, respectively, putting him in second place going into the final day – 12
ounces behind Jacob Wheeler.
“It was pretty amazing how I could fish a piece a wood, catch
one off it, come back an hour later and catch another off it,” he says. “All
week long I kept fishing the same targets over and over, and they kept
producing.
“I really don’t know why that is, either,” he continues. “I
don’t know if the falling water pulls them to those places. I don’t know if
there is a school of them living on each log. I don’t know if every time I
catch one, another one moves up there. All I know is they kept replenishing on
those same targets.”
Knight wrapped up his week with a final-round effort of 11
pounds, 7 ounces for a four-day total of 51 pounds, 12 ounces. He won by nearly
4 pounds.
“I’m physically and emotionally drained out,” Knight adds. “I’m
sure I’ll sleep good tonight and maybe even have some more good dreams.”
Top 10 Pros
1. Brad Knight – Lancing, Tenn. – 51-12
(20)
2. Ramie Colson Jr. – Cadiz, Ky. – 47-13
(18)
3. Brandon Cobb – Greenwood, S.C. – 47-11
(20)
4. Jacob Wheeler – Indianapolis, Ind. – 45-13
(18)
5. Scott Martin – Clewiston, Fla. – 45-4
(18)
6. Bryan Thrift – Shelby, N.C. – 45-0 (20)
7. Larry Nixon – Bee Branch, Ark. – 44-10 (18)
8. Zack Birge – Blanchard, Okla. – 43-11
(20)
9. Mark Daniels Jr. – Tuskegee, Ala. – 37-12 (19)
10.
Chris Baumgardner – Gastonia, N.C. – 37-9 (16)
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