On Saturday May 6th we had six boats entered in the tournament.  Fisherman Bob Jutzi teamed with his fish finding dog Lux, subbing for Tennessee Mike Wiley who was in sick bay.  Dan Jones braved the elements alone as Brother Bill was missing in action but hankering to fish.  The “Stump Bumper” manned by twins Andy and Brian Dykes kept the wind at their back of their trolling motor powered boat.  They caught 36 Bass and one Chunky Sunfish.  John Ervin with daughter Presley matched Pontoon skills with Ned & Rutledge Workmen, their Bimini tops acted like sails in the brisk wind.  

Daron Strub and I headed for the flats near the Boy Scout camp at the 7:30 AM tournament start.   Daron caught two keepers right off the bat.   We moved on to the third basin, up the normally calm creek (above Camp Firewater) and were almost blown back to Snake Island.   Then we motored into the lagoon (above the landing) and caught a few less than the 12 inch tournament length minimum.    We had to use the 35 HP to maneuver out past the landing.   In the wind and cold we escaped the third basin, moved onto the second where it was like a different day.    Ten minutes later the wind picked up there, we fished the Williams and Thompson’s docks catching a few releasable fish. 

Trying to stay out of the wind, we moved across the 2nd basin to the left of the Lattice house, where it drops off quickly.   Daron had been catching Bass with the Watermelon Seed Trick worm.  I had been trying swim baits, a paddle tail salted Zoom worm and a four inch finesse worm.   Although I’d had pickups I’d only landed one small bass and many weeds.  I switched to our “true blue” trick worm like Daron.

As it was still windy, we were skipping worms, about 20 feet from the shore.   I felt a slight tug as my worm and hook slowly sunk toward bottom.   After setting the hook and hearing my drag go out, although it was still deep, I told Daron to get the net for this one.  The Bass went under the boat, luckily did not go into the brush, and then we saw its large mouth!  Daron netted it, got it into the boat and we high-fived.  The hook was down its throat; Daron put his whole fist in and pulled out the hook with fresh worm intact.  The Bass barely fit into the cooler, diagonally 22 inches long.  As it as 10 AM, we freshened the cooler water every half hour or so with a pitcher until the weigh-in.

At the high noon weigh-in, I won the Big Fish prize ($30) for the six and a quarter pound “lunker”.    It swam away from our dock after a kiss.  Ned and Rutledge ($20) had a nice stringer of three at 2.8 pounds and the Dykes Brothers ($10) had three about two pounds.   Daron and I had three almost the same weight.   In my 25 plus years of organizing small local tournaments, this Big Bass was by far the largest caught. 

For the weather conditions the fishing was awesome.   Although it was cold and windy, there was another front approaching later in the day which helped.   There were almost 100 Bass caught, but only a dozen over the 12 inch tournament minimum.   Only one was over a pound and half, although reports of large fish rolling and escaping were told from all over the lake.  All fish were released to swim another day. 

The rules, results and photos of this and past year’s tournaments are the Internet, click here.

Good Fishing, Stu Davidson