Unfortunately, my biggest catch at Lanier in the Georgia Bass Nation Top Six last week was a cold that just won’t seem to go away. In five days on the water the weather went from windy and cool to pouring rain to very cold with strong winds. And fishing was tough.
I met fellow club and team member Dan Phillips at the ramp Wednesday morning after camping out the night before in my van. We stood around for more than an hour waiting to register the team, then went fishing. The wind blew and it was cool all day.
Dan showed me a good hump in the mouth of Wahoo
Creek he liked to fish but we got no bites there. By 3:00 PM we had fished many places we both liked, working down the lake to Browns Bridge. As we fished around a shallow secondary point I noticed some rocks out in 12 to 14 feet of water. They showed up on my Humminbird 360 Scan depthfinder.
A cast to them with a jig and pig produced a three pound spotted bass, our first keeper of the day. I went looking for similar places and a nearby point with rocks at a similar depth produced another keeper. By then it was time to head back to the ramp. I hoped I had found a little pattern that would work in the tournament.
Thursday morning was cooler and foggy. I launched alone and started fishing up the river, finding it very muddy not far about Clarks Bridge. One small creek was full of shad flipping on the surface but all
I caught there was a 13-inch spot, too small to keep, that hit a spinnerbait.
Fishing around another small creek up the river I cast a jig and pig to some brush out in front of a dock and caught a 15-inch keeper spotted bass. A little further another one that size hit the jig in a tree top, then I caught a two-pound largemouth beside a shallow dock on a shaky head worm. By then it was time to head in to get ready to go to the meeting to draw partners.
I drew boat #11 out of 77 meaning I would go out near the first on Friday morning but near the end on Saturday. Order of take-off is reversed on the second day. My first day partner was a first time Top Six fisherman from Clayton County and my second day partner was from north Georgia. I had met him and been on a state team with him in the past.
That night my chest started feeling congested but the next morning I was ok. I met my partner early since we were going out early and there were also 40 boats in the College division fishing and I was afraid it would take a long time to launch.
I should not have worried. We were in the boat ready to go by 6:45, expecting to take off around 7:25. Due to a fog delay we finally blasted off at 9:38! We ran 15 minutes to the two points where I had caught fish on Wednesday but got no bites. That was the pattern.
At noon I finally caught a keeper, and my partner lost a nice bass that hit a topwater plug. At two o’clock we decided to go back up river to Wahoo Creek since he had caught some fish there, and I got my second keeper on the hump Dan had showed me. We stayed in that creek the rest of the day and my partner broke his line on one big fish and landed a three-pound spot, but I never hooked another one.
Saturday morning I woke to rain drumming on the van roof. We took off on time and my partner and I decided to make the short trip to Wahoo Creek and stay there all day since he liked to fish it. The first stop on the hump Dan had showed me produced a three-pound spot for me on a spinnerbait.
My partner caught a keeper spot on a nearby point, and I landed three more keepers on a jig and pig on rocky banks by noon, but neither of us hooked a fish the last three hours we had to fish. I came in 32 out of 77 boaters with six weighing 11.47 pounds, not as good as had hoped. It took ten bass weighing 21.44 pounds to win.
The only bad thing I saw with the pro-am format that I had been worried about was some of the boaters bragging that their no-boaters did not catch a keeper all day. That was stupid. Boaters did not compete with no boaters and I wanted my no boaters to do good each day.
Sunday morning I met “Lanier Jim” at a ramp. He spent about an hour on the water fine tuning my deptfinders, making them show much better results. The wind was howling and it was very cold. I was glad he did it quickly. By the time I got home that afternoon my chest was very congested and I had a runny nose, that is still bothering me on Friday!