After an unusually warm, wet December the weather turned normal just in time for the Flint River January tournament, making for a slow January tournament on Lake Sinclair. It was very cold and windy all day last Sunday. But the lake water was still unusually warm. And it was as muddy as I have ever seen it from the December rains. You could almost track a deer across the coves.

Back in the 1970s and 80s Sinclair got muddy every winter. But even when the lake was muddy some of the lower lake creeks like Island and Rocky stayed relatively clear. Not this year. On most of the lake a chartreuse crankbait disappeared when it was about two inches deep. It was not much better anywhere I checked.

The water temperature was in the mid 50s, almost ten degrees warmer than most years. It was 55 at Dennis Station where we launched and I saw water as warm as 58 degrees in a creek near the dam. When I saw the temperature I was just sure I could catch lot of bass, especially after hearing about the Berry’s Tournament on Saturday.

In that tournament about 140 teams competed. It took five bass weighing 24 pounds to win! That is a lot but sometimes a team just gets lucky. But this time the top four teams all had five bass weighing more than 20 pounds, and it took five at almost 14 pounds to finish in 21th place and get a check!

As I talked about last week, our club fishermen are the “Joes” when it comes to fishing and some of the teams in the Berry’s tournaments are the “Pros.” The conditions didn’t change much from Saturday to Sunday so we can’t blame that. And the fish did bite for some on Sunday.

I was meeting Grant Kelly after our weigh-in to get information for my February Georgia Outdoor News Map of the Month article. He lives on the lake and is good friends with guide Matt Henry. Grant had called Matt and asked him to try to catch a big bass for us to use for pictures. Matt showed up at 3:30 with four bass, a five pounder, a three pounder and two more about two pounds each. And he said he had just lost another five pounder that jumped and threw his bait. So bigger fish did bite for some on Sunday.

In the Flint River Tournament eight members and one youth fished for eight hours to land 14 bass weighing about 29 pounds. There was one limit and four people didn’t have a keeper.

Don Gober had the five fish limit and it weighed 9.59 pounds for first. My three at 7.87 pounds was second and I had a 4.43 pound largemouth for big fish. John Smith had three weighing 5.98 for third, Niles Murray’s two at 3.22 pounds was fourth and Jack Ridgeway had one weighing 2.40 pounds for fifth. That was it!

Tyler Gruber fished with me as a youth. All our tournaments are adult and youth tournaments. I was worried since I knew fishing would be tough and I was afraid Tyler would get discouraged, but he fished hard the whole eight hours.

We started on a steep bank with rocks, fishing crankbaits, spinnerbaits and jigs. The wind was already bad, making it cold and hard to control the boat. For over an hour we did not get a bite, then something thumped my crankbait between two docks. I never hooked it and suspect it was a small white bass or hybrid.

After working into a creek we came to some brush off a seawall. I pitched my jig right to the seawall and moved it a foot or so and hit the brush, then a fish grabbed it. When I set the hook I yelled for the net since I could see it was a good fish but it was so close to the boat there was no time for Tyler to get it.

I lifted the four pounder out of the water, it hit the side of the boat, balanced there for a second and then came into the boat – and the hook fell out of its mouth! I came that close to losing it. That is why I hate lifting one over the side.

After spending another half hour fishing up the river we ran down to the dam. One of my favorite banks had wind blowing down it so it was hard to control the boat and cast, but on one of my cast with a crankbait right beside a seawall a keeper bass grabbed it before I could even turn the reel handle. I fought it to the boat and Tyler did a good job netting it. It was barely hooked on one of the back hooks.

An hour later, just after noon, I realized my trolling motor batteries were almost dead from fighting the wind. They are supposed to hold up better than that, they are only 14 months old. So I went to a protected area on a different sea wall to fish.

Some brush just off the seawall caught my eye and a pitch to it with jig and pig brought a thump. When I set the hook a two bass flew out of the water over my head into the water on the other side of the boat. When I got it back over the boat it fell off the hook. That made two of my three I really should have lost!

Not long before we had to head in I felt a thump on my jig and pig in front of a dock and landed a two pound catfish! That was the only other bite we got.

When fishing is tough like it was Sunday all you can do is make a lot of casts and hope.