The purpose of this paper is to show that elliptic
diophantine equations cannot always be solved--in the most practical
sense--by the Thue approach, that is, by solving each of the finitely
many corresponding Thue equations of degree 4. After a brief general
discussion, which is necessarily of a heuristic nature, to substantiate
our claim, we consider the elliptic equation associated with the Ochoa
curve. An explicit computational explanation as to the reasons for the
failure of the Thue approach in this case is followed by a complete
solution of the standard Weierstraß equation of this elliptic curve
by a method which makes use of a recent lower bound for linear forms in
elliptic logarithms.