Last Sunday 14 members and guests of the Flint River Bass Club fished our July tournament at West Point. After 8.5 hours of casting, nobody had a limit and three people didn’t land a keeper. We weighed in 17 bass that totaled about 32 pounds.

A teenage guest of Rick Burns, Patrick Thomas, beat us all with two bass weighing 5.51 pounds and his 4.72 pound largemouth was big fish. Chuck Croft has four at 5.47 pounds for second, third was Gary Morrow with one bass weighing 3.95 pounds and my two at 3.79 pounds was good for fourth.

Fishing was tough for us but the West Georgia Bass Club, a buddy tournament trail out of LaGrange, had a tournament the same day. They had about 180 boats in the tournament and there were many teams with good catches. It took five bass weighing 17 pounds to win and at least 11 teams had more than 12 pounds.

I started fishing between the railroad bridge and Highway 109 bridge. They took off at about 6:20 AM and I saw only about ten boats headed down the lake. I stayed in that area all day and I guess that was a mistake. Most everybody in the West Georgia club went up the river. Maybe that is where I should have headed.

I started in the dark fishing a spinner bait on rocks but never got a bite. At 6:30 I was fishing a buzz bait and hooked a keeper, and it fell off as I tried to lift it into the boat. That gave me hope I could catch some fish on topwater but I never got another bite on top.

After the sun got over the trees I switched to a jig head worm and fished some rocks in about eight feet of water. I missed one bite but a little later, at 7:30 I hooked and landed a keeper spotted bass. At least I had one in the live well and would not zero.

I fished that place hard and a couple of more without catching anything then I ran to a rock pile where I caught seven or eight spotted bass a month ago. I fished it for 30 minutes without a bite, then just as I was about to leave, hooked and landed a bass that was close to three pounds. That fired me up and I stayed there for two more hours – without getting another bite.

With less than two hours to fish I hit several more spots but never caught another fish. It was a long, tough day for me and everyone else in the club. I thought my three pounder might have a shot at big fish but there were two others bigger than mine. Just my luck.

Saturday night is the July Sportsman Club tournament at Sinclair. The tournament will run, or ran by the time you read this, from 5:00 PM to 1:00 AM. I hope the fish will bite better at night. At least the weather will be much more bearable.