In my opinion, the weather has the greatest impact on fishing. We watch the forecast for the tournament day closely. An impending cold front, a barometric pressure drop followed by afternoon rain makes the preceding morning a good time to fish. This was the prediction for Saturday May 4th, 2019.

 

At 7:30 AM, eight boats left our dock in search of four bass over the 12 inch minimum. The awards are for the largest bass and stringers of three, excluding the one big bass. We had the usual variety of entries, from Jon Boats to Pontoon’s rigged for fishing to fancy Bass boats. The 70 degree weather was prefect and overcast to start. By noon, the sun was cooking the fishermen at 80 plus degrees.

 

Team Stump Knocker’s first cast was at the boathouse next to ours where they had caught the six pound 2018 tournament winner. No such luck for the twins this year. I plotted a course for the third basin as the others took off to their favorite spots. Daron Strub and I started fishing at the far end of the bird houses. We used Zoom Trick Worms Watermelon Seed, casting close to shore and skipping under docks. Daron had a pickup or tail grabber on each cast initially. We caught at least three dozen bass before noon and missed an equal amount. The bad news is that we only boated one over the minimum length. My rear motor got stuck in the silt close to the landing, to free it we both had to get in the front of the boat; luckily we did not go swimming. I hooked a nice bass on my next cast and was told not to lose it as it was a keeper. It jumped and spit the worm.

 

At the noon weigh-in, Rutledge Workman had the only Bass worth weighing. It was two and three quarter pounds, caught by the submerged tree at Snake Island. He often uses a finesse “Ned” jig rig, but hooked the big bass using a top water Pop-R lure. Rut and Ned’s prize was $40. Twins Andy and Brian Dykes stringer of matching triplets (each measuring 12 inches exactly) weighed 1.74 pounds for $30. No one else had three over the minimum. George Alley and Robert Carter’s lone keeper of almost a pound was slightly larger than our one eligible bass, so they took the second stringer ($10). Rut and Ned has a second keeper about the same size as ours.

 

Other participants were Steve Sims with Terry Lynch, Ed Justice with Luke Miller, Spike Brannon with Cody Heyer and Jeff Harmon with Jay Geddings. At the noon weigh-in we joked about lowering the length minimum as everyone had the same issue. Almost all of the 150 bass caught were 11.5 inches or less. It’s really not about catching fish; we do this more for the quest and comradery. We saw buzzards roosting on a boathouse, many fish beds, a geese clan in a yard, some healthy grass carp but far less weeds. Go Carp!

 

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

 

Good Fishing, Stu Davidson