In Shreveport & Ready for the Cup

Twelve hours or so after leaving home dark and early this morning, I arrived in Shreveport, got checked into my hotel and looked around just a bit to see where thing are. All that's left to do now is to find a bite to eat and get some good rest. Forrest Wood Cup starts tomorrow morning, and I get to go out in a photo boat, so I need to be at the marina well before first light.

I'm looking forward to the morning. I've never been on the Red River, but I've read (and written, based on others' reports) quite a bit about it and it's an important bass destinations, so I'm excited to see it for myself. My plan is to look for multiple competitors' on the water in order to get photos and see first-hand how they are fishing and what the fish are doing. Assuming there's at least some cell signal on the water, I'll be blogging during the day and posting on my facebook fishing page and twitter.

The word I've heard the most from competitors to describe their expectations about this year's Cup has been "grind." Everyone seems to contend that it will be a grind, although I suspect the word grind means different things to different anglers. Some of it, I'm sure, relates to the simple fact that it is going to be hot (albeit not quite as hot as it has been). More so, though, I think it has to do with the fact that bites from quality fish have been hard to find. Pros expect to have to really grind it out and catch as many fish as possible with hopes that their plan brings some quality fish. It may also mean they'll have to work a lot of water to get the fish and that there's not likely to be a magic spot that someone rides. Because the Red is challenging to navigate, getting rom one place you want to fish to the next can be a grind, especially when you are fishing against the clock.

We won't really know much for sure until to tomorrow when they bring fish to the scales, though.  Quite understandably, the pros don't tend to reveal their full hand when talking about expectations, so if someone is on a big-fish pattern, we probably wouldn't hear much about it quite yet!

Redder Red for Cup?

The good news about the 5-day outlook for the Shreveport area is that it's not supposed to be quite as hot as it has been virtually every day in recent weeks. Highs beginning tomorrow will be in the 80s, which is quite mild for the Red River basin during August. Triple-digits are common during mid-summer, and it has been hot enough this summer that pros who have spent the past couple of days practicing for the Forrest Wood Cup have found water temperatures in the 90s virtually everywhere they have looked.

The not-so-good news is that the forecast also speaks of a fair chance at heavy rain this afternoon and an even better chance tomorrow. Rain between now and the tournament, which runs Thursday through Sunday, isn't all bad, necessarily. Most pros would welcome added current in the river. The problem is that heavy rains can bring more mud, and the river is already running redder than normal for August.

While it's true that the Red is called the Red for a reason and that its bass are accustomed to feeding in dirty water, more mud clearly would mean less viable patterns, and it would take some types of fishing of the equation. That would shrink the playing field and cause more pros to want to fish the same kinds of cover and therefore some of the same waters. And while it's true that official waters are extensive, navigation can be slow, and competitors are fishing against the clock, so the best waters in stretches that are at least somewhat near the launch area still could get crowded.

The other downside about added mud, if it comes, is simply that it alter things. If it arrives, it will begin doing so near the end of practice, so even if it makes some bites better, it could eliminate some of what the competitors have spent three days finding and force them to begin the competition in search mode. If heavy rain does come, it's effects probably will not be equitable. Someone's favorite backwater will get silted in or too muddy to produce, while someone else's river spot will pick up just enough current to ignite a better bite. That's just the nature of a big, complex river system.

Of course, given the sporadic nature of summer storms, it might not rain at all, or it might come on a tournament day instead, creating yet another set of circumstances.

Red Hot at Red River

Looking at my local 10-day forecast this morning, I realized the dates at the tail end were the days of the start of the Forrest Wood Cup. That made the championship event and my travel seem extra real and caused me to hop over to the 10-day for Shreveport, which is hosting the Cup on the Red River. Appears it'll be good and hot, which I suppose is not a huge surprise. Today's high will hit triple digits (a notable contrast from the low to mid-80s we've mostly had for highs in North Georgia this summer). All the highs throughout the Shreveport 10-day are at least in the 90s, without a lot of rain

Of course, the 46 pros who will be battling for title of champion and the $1/2 million top prize are more concerned about finding the Red's hottest big-bass bite than they are about the actual temperatures. That said, the weather, both now and during the tournament, will most likely play an important part in those answers. The color, level and temperature of the water all impact how the bass behave, and all of those are determined mostly by the weather.

When the competitors show up for official practice early next week, it will have been a few weeks since any of them have been allowed on the river, so I'm sure that even now most are thinking about how a period of true summer conditions will likely impact any patterns or fish locations they might have found during pre-practice. Depending when they visited last and how they like to operate, some will begin with what they found and try to see how fish have adjusted. Others likely used early visits only to learn navigation and to look at the river and its extensive backwaters and will begin their search for fish on the first day of practice.

As of now, the forecast for Thursday, August 15, the day the competition actually begins, is for a high of 93 and scattered thunderstorms. That'll shift, I suspect, but I'm pretty confident that it'll be good and hot on the Red River that day.