Randall Tharp shows off a big bass caught on the first day of the Forrest Wood Cup on Lake Ouachita in Arkansas. Tharp caught 16 pounds even to move into fifth place after Thursday.

Randall Tharp is getting closer to a massive payday.

The Gardendale pro bass fisherman had caught a limit of 10 bass weighing 29 pounds, 1 ounce over the first two days of the 2011 Forest Wood Cup, the biggest tournament on the Walmart FLW Tour trail.

That effort put him in third place, easily making the top-20 cut Saturday on Lake Ouachita in Arkansas. If he ends up in the top 10 after that, he’ll move on to the finals on Sunday, where the winner walks away with prize money of $600,000.

Tharp had two good days where he stayed mostly in the same area, and got mostly the same results.

“There are some big fish out there for the taking,” Tharp said shortly after getting off the water Friday. “They were moving in wolf packs. We saw three big ones in one pack, and I caught two  of them. And I only lost one fish today.”

Losing fish was more of an issue on Thursday’s first day on the lake.

“I was lucky to have 16 [pounds], because I lost six of the first seven big bites I had today,” Tharp said in his interview with the FLW television show after the weigh-in. “I’m going to have to capitalize on every bite I have to win this thing.”

Tharp ended the first day in fifth place with a catch of 16 pounds even, despite having a day that he called “a train wreck.”

He added 13 pounds plus an ounce on Friday, faring well when many others on the leaderboard slipped, and conditions were generally tougher.

“It’s shaping up to be quite a shootout these last two days,” Tharp said at Friday’s weigh-in. “If you look at some of the names on the leaderboard, it’s going to be fun fishing out there.”

Tharp was just a little more than two pounds behind the leader, Jason Christie of Park Hill, Okla. with 31-7.