Two Arkansans qualified for the Bassmaster Classic at the Bassmaster Angler of the Year Championship last week at Sturgeon Bay, Wis.
The tournament featured the top 50 points leaders on the Bassmaster Elite Series Tour. Only the top 40 earned berths in the Classic, which will be held on Grand Lake O' the Cherokees in Oklahoma on March 4-6, so it was the last chance for anglers in the lower tier to earn enough points for the championship.
Mark Davis of Mount Ida made the cut by finishing 36th, and Billy McCaghren of Mayflower slipped in at 40th place.
Scott Rook of Little Rock missed the Classic by finishing in 44th place.
Davis, who has won three Bassmaster Angler of the Year titles, will make his 19th Classic appearance. He won the 1995 Classic, but he finished 32nd in a 52-man field at the 2013 Classic at Grand Lake. He said he's excited to return to Grand, which ranks 13th in Bassmaster magazine's top 100 bass lakes for 2015, but he said he doesn't expect the lake to fish the same as it did in 2013.
For starters, the 2013 Classic was in February, when the weather was very cold and volatile. It was the same way at this year's Classic at Lake Hartwell, S.C.
BASS moved the Classic to early March in hopes of catching some better weather.
"Had we been at Grand the same week this year, that entire part of the lake where we would have launched was solid ice," Davis said. "I'm sure [BASS] knew that. That Tulsa area can be brutally cold in February, but it can be in March, as well."
The weather certainly didn't deter bass fishing fans, which turned out in such numbers and with such fervor to make the 2013 Classic at Tulsa's BOK Center one of the most exciting in history.
Cliff Pace of Petal, Miss., won that Classic, but he was unable to defend his title last year because of injuries he sustained from falling out of a deer stand.
"Cliff is a good friend of mine," Davis said. "He caught his fish with a jig one day, and he caught them with a jerkbait the next day. I think he even caught some cranking."
That was an eye-opener, Davis said.
"I was surprised how shallow the fish were, so that might be somewhat of a lesson," he elaborated. "That lake doesn't fish like our lakes here in Arkansas. It's more like a Midwestern lake, or some of those in central Missouri."
After all these years, Davis said competitive bass fishing is still exciting, but the travel and the logistical aspects of his business are wearisome.
"The Classic is special. That part of it never gets old," Davis said. "All the travel and schedule keeping and all the things we have to do throughout the year get old, but the fishing part never gets old."
One thing that has changed is the declining prominence of Arkansas anglers in the Classic. Only two Arkies from the Elite Series have qualified. It's still possible one might make it from the Open series. That makes Davis, who will turn 52 on Oct. 11, wistful.
"There's only six [Arkansans] that compete in the Elites anymore," Davis. "I remember years when we had five or six going to the Classic, and now we only have six competing."
While he still enjoys fishing and competing, Davis acknowledged that he's not as intense as he was in the 90s.
"It's kind of a natural progression for us not to be as hot as we were then," Davis said. "I still know where I'm at. I know the score, but I get older every year and the competition gets younger every year. There's certainly nothing easy about it."
BFL news
Quincy Houchin of Mabelvale won the FLW BFL Arkie Division Super Tournament on Sunday at Lake Hamilton by catching 10 bass over two days that weighed 23 pounds, 10 ounces to win $5,065.
Houchin sealed the victory, his first in FLW competition, by catching five bass that weighed 14-12, mostly with a leopard-colored Spro Frog.
"Each day of the tournament I focused on shallow grass in the mid-lake areas," Houchin said. "It was a pretty basic deal -- everything I did was grass-related with topwater baits."
Michael Lucas of Forrest City won the co-angler division and $2,471 with a two-day total of seven bass weighing 13-15.
Keith Green of Arkadelphia caught the biggest bass of the tournament in the pro division Friday. The fish weighed 4-11 and was worth $622.
Sports on 09/24/2015