I arrived on Tuesday and set up camp, then got up Wednesday morning and drove 30 minutes to West Point Lake to practice for the Potato Creek Saturday tournament. I found some bushes with a Mayfly hatch and caught a four pounder on a buzzbait in the shade of them, so I thought I had found something.

I marked some more Mayfly bushes and some deep-water places that looked good the rest of that day. I went back on Thursday and found some more, so I felt pretty good about catching fish in the tournament.

On Friday I put in at Bartletts Ferry to check things out there for the Sportsman Club Sunday tournament. It was a week early due to Father’s Day this weekend. The limb I shook the Sunday before and released a cloud of Mayflies was still full of them. When I shook the same limb they flew around me so thick I had to breathe thought my nose to keep from eating one!

That gave me hope since I had caught a four pounder there in the Flint River tournament. I spent a few hours looking for more bushes full of Mayflies and found many, and marked some good looking cover on points before a thunderstorm ran me off the lake at 2:00.

Last Saturday 24 members of the Potato Creek Bassmasters fished our June tournament at West Point. After nine hours of casting, we brought 68 keeper bass weighing about 118 pounds to the scales. There were ten five-bass limits and three people did not weigh in a fish.

Caleb Delay won big with five weighing 14.15 pounds and his 4.82 pound largemouth was big fish. Edward Folker was second with five at 9.92 pounds, Kwong Yu was third with five weighing 9.90 pounds and Mitchell Cardell came in fourth with five at 8.77 pounds.

My practice didn’t really help me. I landed one on a buzzbait near a Mayfly hatch, one on a Carolina Rig on an old roadbed I found and one on a whacky rigged Senko that hit near some Mayflies. I did lose two nice two-pound fish that I got right to the boat and they just pulled off, one on a shaky head worm and one on a jig and pig.

At Bartletts Ferry Sunday ten members of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our June tournament. After nine hot hours in our boats, we brough 30 keepers weighing about 39 pounds to the scales. There were two five fish limits and one person didn’t weigh in a fish.

Jay Gerson had a limit weighing 10.51 pounds for first and his 4.14 pound largemouth was big fish. Raymond English had five weighing 7.02 pounds for second, my three weighing 6.02 pounds was third and Glenn Anderson had four weighing 6.09 pounds for fourth. He actually beat me but he had a dead fish that cost him a .2 pound penalty.

Practice didn’t really help here, either. I did catch one keeper on a buzzbait on the same seawall where I caught one the week before, and caught my biggest fish, a 3.48 pounder that hit a weightless Trick worm on another seawall. My third fish came out of some deep brush where I had caught one the weekend before, and my partner Chris Davies got two keepers there and another one off a dock.