Switching pools leads to big payday for Gunnell

One axiom associated with bass tournament fishing is that "if you are running, you ain't winning."

These tournaments often have competitors in bass boats zipping here and there at 70 miles an hour. For Duke Gunnell, though, winning meant driving 160 miles or so two-thirds of the way through the Big Bass Bonanza's allotted three days on the Arkansas River.

Gunnell switched from the Dardanelle Pool to the Pendleton Pool, caught an 8.14-pound largemouth bass and won the $100,000 top prize.

Gunnell's catch had other effects for tournament administrators and for Arkansas bass fishermen. The first two days of the Bonanza had been led by John Higman of Evansville with a 7.81-pound bass caught in the Fort Smith Pool. This was pleasing to tournament people because it was a pool that had not previously produced an overall winner. The Big Bass Bonanza winning fish previously had come from either Dardanelle or Pendleton among the five competition pools.

A winner from the Fort Smith Pool or the Little Rock Pool or the Pine Bluff Pool may have helped spread out the field of competitors from the Dardanelle and Pendleton pools.

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Gunnell's catch also confirmed what bass fishermen in the lower Arkansas River and biologists with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission have been saying lately. The lower part of the river is on the rebound as far as bass fishing.

Alan Melder of Monticello, the Bonanza weighmaster at the site, said, "It's not only this tournament; other tournaments are telling us that the (bass) fishing is better in this part of the river. In the one-day tournaments, 7 to 10 pounds (for a 5-bass tournament limit) were winning, and now it takes 12 to 15 pounds to win one of these tournaments."

Kevin Hopkins, AGFC's assistant black bass program biologist, was on hand at the Pendleton weigh-in site for the Bonanza when Gunnell brought his fish to the scale. Hopkins said, "We have had a good spawn down in this part of the river this year. The bass seem to be improving from all reports."

The Pendleton pool yielded the Bonanza's third largest fish, 7.32 pounds by Steve Blasengame of Star City, Twelve bass weighing between 6 and 7 pounds were also checked in at Pendleton.

Gunnell and his partner, Hugh Burnett of Little Rock moved from Dardanelle to Pendleton and fished Post Lake, an oxbow water next to Arkansas Post National Memorial. But they steered away from a number of other competitors who were fishing in open water near the edge of lily pads. Gunnell and Burnett went deep into the thick lily pads.

Gunnell said, "One bass hit at my white (plastic) frog so hard it looked like somebody dropped a cinder block in the water. But it missed. In a little while, a fish just sucked in the lure. I set the hook, then we had a fight on our hands."

The catch was made about 9:45 the final morning of the Bonanza. Gunnell weighed in the bass, held it up for some photos then headed right back to those lily pads in Post Lake. "I came down here to fish," he said, and he knew that there was another "hawg" bass in the area, that one that he compared to a cinder block.

The lower Arkansas River had produced big largemouth bass for decades, although it declined in the late 1980s.

A largemouth bass from Coal Pile, which got its name in 19th century steamboat days, was the state record at 13 pounds, 4 ounces, until the current record of 16-4 was caught in 1976 at Mallard Lake in northeast Arkansas.

The Coal Pile area has been hampered by excessive vegetation in recent years, and Merrisach Lake, just downstream from Post Lake, has become a drawing card for bass seekers. Many of the heavier bass in this year's Big Bass Bonanza came out of Merrisach.

(Log Cabin outdoor writer Joe Mosby can be contacted by e-mail at jhmosby@cyberback.com.)