Last Sunday 13 members and guests of the Flint River Bass Club fished our September tournament at Lake Lanier. It was a very frustrating tournament for all of us but one. There was only one limit weighed in and six people didn’t have a keeper. Three of those catching fish had only one keeper.

We weighed in 16 bass over the 14-inch minimum length after eight hours of casting. They weighed about 28 pounds. Five of the fish were largemouth, all the rest were spotted bass, as is expected at Lanier.

Kwong Yu wore us all out with a limit weighing 10.24 pounds and got the big fish award with a 2.35-pound largemouth. He also had another one weighing 2.33 pounds. JJ Polak was second with two keepers weighing 3.49 pounds, Gary Morrow had two at 3.23 pounds for second and Don Gober was fourth with two weighing 3.15 pound.

I was excited about this tournament. After doing a GON article with Rob Jordan on Lanier and seeing the size and numbers of fish that can be caught there I thought I could do well. Rob fished a tournament Saturday and I talked to him after it was over I was even more hopeful.

Rob and his partner had done well, catching a limit of spots weighing about 15 pounds and they got big fish with a spot weighing almost five pounds. They had caught most of their fish, including the big one, on a spot we put on the Map of the Month article.

Al and I fished a few places near the ramp since it was pretty dark. Then we ran down to Young Deer Creek. Rob said the spots were schooling on a point there and hitting topwater baits. They were getting a lot of hits on top but missing most of the fish. The big one was landed on a topwater bait but most of the fish were caught on Fish Head Spins.

We pulled up on one of the points and saw fish schooling but could not get them to hit anything. Then Al saw fishing breaking on the point across the creek so we went to them. We could see they were big bass but just did not seem to want our baits.

I did have two big fish blow up on my Zara Spook but didn’t hook them. After chasing them for an hour without any luck I tried a drop shot worm in the brush on the point and caught a keeper. But that was it. We fished there for another hour without a bite.

We left at about 11:00 to get closer to the ramp. The main lake gets terribly rough from all the big boats at Lanier so we wanted to get back across the big water before it got to be a miserable ride.

For the last three hours we tried docks without any bites but did catch some short fish on drop show worms in brush piles on points. But no more keepers.

The one keeper I caught and the small ones were in brush piles in about 30 feet of water. I am not used to fishing that deep but the spotted bass live in very deep water at Lanier, and you have to fish deep most of the year to catch them.

It was a good plan but as so often happens, the fish just were not on the same plan.