During the 2007 season, Boyd Duckett left Russellville with a cool $250,000 in his pocket after claiming the Bassmaster Legends Major held on Lake Dardanelle. However, Duckett’s 55-9 pound winning weight was acquired during Arkansas’ mid-summer heat. 

Last week, 57 collegiate teams descended on Dardanelle for the annual Arkansas Tech Invitational. The two day tournament was won by the University of Louisville with nearly 35 pounds. That being said, nearly half the field failed to crack the 10 pound mark over the course of the tournament. 

After two days of practice on Dardanelle, many of the Elite Series anglers that spoke to The BZ at the state park boat ramp on Tuesday had more questions than answers. Where is the grass? What happened to the baitfish? Where are the keepers? 

The driving rains and cold front that swept across the plains of Oklahoma on Monday reached Lake Dardanelle in full force on Tuesday causing many anglers to seek shelter mid-day. As dusk approached, the line of storms passed leaving bluebird skies and a nip in the air. While Thursday is predicted to be calm, Friday and Saturday will be anything but hospitable to the pros searching for Lake Dardanelle’s 15 inch keeper largemouth. 

With a low of 35 degrees predicted for Saturday, the 50 remaining Elite Series anglers will once again be bundled up at launch, reminiscent to the 2009 Bassmaster Classic and Lake Amistad morning take-offs. 

The general consensus among competitors is that this will be a tournament of survival where a few anglers will find the bass, but for the majority of the field, any limit is a good limit and a kicker is gold.

Here’s what some of the anglers had to say about their practice time on Dardanelle:

Gary Klein
“This is a great fishery and there are a lot of quality fish that live in here so it just comes down to a matter of figuring them out. The areas are really getting changed right now because of the weather so that’s probably one of the biggest challenges right now.

“Water that was fishable yesterday got trashed today but it might settle out for the tournament. I feel fairly confident but I’ve only got a couple areas that I think I can do OK in so I’m staying away from that stuff for the rest of practice. It’s kind of a cat and mouse game.

“I think 15 pounds a day will be really strong here with a few 20 pound bags brought in but not many. When you finally get one to bite, they are fat chunks. It’s going to be an exciting tournament but not all the field is going to catch them here.”

Marty Stone
“I don’t even know if the front is going to matter that much. Right now, I’m just envious of what those college kids caught last week when they had over 30 pounds. I haven’t seen that since we’ve been here. 

“The main river is pretty trashed and muddy. The back waters have got pretty cover and great water temperature and they also have every stinkin’ boat in the tournament back there. It seems like we’re going around in a big marry-go-round.

“The first day I had a few keeper bites and saw some good fish and then today I had a few more bites but saw less keeper fish. You can tell that these fish have really been fished for. I don’t know what it’s going to take other than it’s going to take getting a good bite and being able to have the mental toughness to put up with the crowd. 

“I looked a lot today for an off-shore bite and I still say that there’s going to be a group of fish staged up and whoever finds those fish is going to do really well.”

James Niggemeyer
“Yesterday I was able to catch one fish her and there and the good thing is that there was a common denominator between bites and I seemed to catch them on one or two different baits. I had to bounce around a lot because it seemed like even if guys weren’t fishing what I was keying on, there was just a lot of boat traffic. Today was the same thing.

“It seems like the majority of the places are really getting pounded right now. The water is low and it seems like there would be a lot more available if the water was up even just a foot more.

“I feel really good coming into this event and I feel like I’m fishing really well. I’m looking forward to this despite the two days of practice that I’ve had. I’m still hopeful and I’ve got one more day of practice.”

Shaw Grigsby
“It’s a lot tougher that what I remember this pond being. This is a great body of water and we’ve fished in April before and in June and both times we just caught a ton of fish. This time, it’s tough. I think its right at pre-spawn and spawn and then you have the cold fronts on top of it. 

“We’re supposed to get some chilly weather coming up here so it’s going to be a tough one. They’ve been pulling water every day and you can see it on the rocks. It’s been moving out of here.”

Matt Reed
“It’s truly not what I expected to find when I got here. They have the water pulled way down so it has kind of been difficult. It seems like I’ve spent about half of my time stuck in the mud trying to get into stuff. It’s just so shallow that you can’t get back into the backwaters.

“When you don’t have the water clarity, you know that it’s going to be a shallow water bite. The water level situation bothers me. Last time I was here it was high and I found fish and they pulled it two feet the night before the tournament. Now it’s low and I’ve got a little bit going on and it worries me that they might fill it back up. With these river impoundments, they can change the level overnight. 

“You just have to fish everyday and do something different. I really don’t have any weight predictions. I hope it’s kind of hard because if it’s not, I’m behind the eight ball. There’s going to be some good sacks caught but a 15 pound stringer will be a good sack of fish if you can duplicate it.”