Last summer on a Saturday night 12 members of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our August tournament at Jackson Lake. It was miserably hot when we started at 7:00 PM and still hot at 3:00 AM when we weighed in. A little breeze started at about 1:00 AM and finally dried all the sweat, but it was too little, too late.

After the eight hours of fishing we brought in 16 bass weighing about 24 pounds. There was one five bass limit and five people didn’t have a keeper. Only two of the bass weighed in were largemouth, all the rest were spotted bass.

Javin English won with a limit weighing 6.20 pounds. My one bass weighing 4.44 pounds was good for second and big fish. Third went to Chris Davies with two bass weighing 4.32 pounds and Niles Murray was fourth with two keepers at 2.52 pounds.

Lightning and pure luck helped me catch my one bass. I started fishing near the boat ramp and as it got dark started to run up the lake to fish some other spots. But lightning flashing off in the west made me stay near the ramp and the van. A phone call home to Linda confirmed it was storming here, so I stayed where I was. I wanted to be able to get off the lake fast since storms usually move west to east, from Griffin right to Jackson.

At about 10:30 the storms had not gotten any closer and I moved across the cove to fish another point. At 11:00 I went back to where I usually fish and another club member was fishing there, so I worked on around the point. That is where I caught the one fish I hooked all night, at 11:55 PM. I surely am glad it was the right one to hook!

That followed a pattern I have settled on the past few years. For years I would get upset and let it bother me, and affect my fishing, if a boat was fishing where I wanted to fish. But about three years ago I headed to a point on Lake Eufaula where I had caught several keepers the day before. I wanted to start there on day two of our tournament but a boat ahead of me stopped on it.

I went across the creek and started down the bank, and landed three good keepers on a spinnerbait. The boat on the point never got a bite. Then and there I decided to just go to another place and now worry about it, and that has worked well for me several times.

It was strange, the storms never moved toward us, and it never rained on us at all.