Fourteen members and guests fished our February tournament at West Point last Sunday. After fishing from 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM we brought 42 keeper bass weighing about 68 pounds to the scales.  There was one zero and four people had five bass limits.

    Lee Hancock won with five weighing 11.33 pounds and had a 4.46 pound largemouth for big fish. My five weighing 8.32 pounds was second and Jay Gerson had five weighing a close 8.23 pounds for third. Doug Acree came in fourth with five weighing 6.65 pound and my partner Will Mclean was fifth with four at 6.56 pounds.

    I started out pretty good. Will and I stopped on a steep bank with blowdowns on it where I caught a good keeper last Saturday and started casting to the trees in the water. I looked down at my Panoptix and saw what looked like several fish on a small brush top ahead of the boat in 2 feet of water.

    I cast a Carolina rigged Baby Brush Hog and watched the weight sink with the bait following it.  When the lead hit bottom one of the fish went to the bait. When I tightened up my line a little I felt weight, set the hook and landed a two pound largemouth, my biggest fish of the day. I would not have made that cast and caught that fish without the Garmin Panoptix.

    At our next stop on a long shallow point where I caught my biggest fish last Saturday a good keeper spot hit the same crankbait and I landed it. For the next few hours the only thing we caught was a largemouth that was not big enough to meet the 14 inch size limit.

    At 11:00 I caught a barely legal 12-inch spot on my Carolina rig on one side of a rocky point then Will got his first keeper on a spinnerbait on the other side of the point.  On our next stop Will got another keeper on his spinnerbait.  Then he caught two more on his spinnerbait in the next two stops, giving him four to my three at 1:00! Made me wonder what I was doing wrong!

    I caught one more keeper, this one on a shaky head worm, on our next stop.  At 2:45 with just 45 minutes left to fish we went into a small creek with three rocky areas on one bank. I told Will we would finish up here since we were across from the ramp. 

    As we fished the first rocky spot a bass boat with two fishermen idled past me and started fishing a short distance ahead of me on the next rocky area.  That made me mad but I learned long ago to just accept inconsiderate people and do something else.

    Will and I ran to the bank where I caught my first keeper but Kwong was fishing it, so we stopped on a rocky point behind him. My first cast with a shaky head produced my fifth keeper.  A short way down the bank I saw a brush pile in front of a dock, cast my shaky head to it and landed my sixth keeper, culling my smallest bass.

    Time ran out before Will caught his fifth keeper. I really wish he had caught the little one I culled, but that would have given him a limit when I had only two.  That might have messed up my mind even more!