Mad dogs and Englishmen may go out in the mid-day sun, but 11 members of the Spalding County Sportsman Club went out in the thunderstorms at Oconee last Sunday. I wonder about my sanity fishing in weather like that.
Weather guessers “forecast” some thunderstorms but light rain most of the day. Wrong. It poured down rain and almost constant lightning all day was much worse than predicted. There was more than 6.5 inch of rain in my gauge in 24 hours.
We were supposed to start at 7:30 AM but a strong storm kept most of us on the bank in our trucks until about 7:45. We had a short break, then the lightning started flashing and the thunder crashing within a few minutes after we took off and continued until about an hour before weigh-in.
In the tournament, 11 of us brought 36 14-inch keeper largemouth weighing about 71 pounds to the scales. There were six five bass limits and three people didn’t catch a fish in the eight rainy hours.
Raymond English won with five weighing 12.79 pounds and Niles Murray was an incredibly close second with five at 12.78 pounds. My five weighing 11.26 pounds was third and I had a 4.55 pound largemouth for big fish. Jay Gerson came in fourth with five weighing 8.72 pounds and for about the third time this year Billy Roberts placed fifth with 5 at 7.92 pounds.
When we took off I made a short run to a rocky point where I caught a 3.5 pound fish in our March tournament two years ago. It was big fish in that tournament. On about my tenth cast with the same crankbait I landed the 4.55 pounder. That was a good start.
After catching a 13.5 inch non keeper out of some grass on that point on a swim jig, the lightning drove me to the back of the cove where I felt the overhanging trees gave me some protection. I ended up sitting against a seawall there trying to cast every few minutes for two hours! I had to run my bilge pumps to keep the boat from filling with water. I did catch three short fish in that time.
I kept looking at my phone and saw the next county south was under a tornado watch. The lightning seemed to be what some call “sheet” lightning, bolts that jump from cloud to cloud rather than cloud to ground. But every few minutes the lake would get bright and the air shake from a nearby ground strike.
It was so bad a very nice homeowner came down to his dock and asked if I was ok. When I said I was just trying to stay in a protected area, he said if it got too bad for me that I could tie up to his dock and come up to his basement, the door was open! There are some nice folks still in this world.
At about 10:00 the storm let up a little and I fished out of the cove. On the point where the big one hit I got my second keeper out of grass on the other side of it on a weightless trick worm.
I made another short run to another good cove and caught several short bass going into the cove, then found a ditch with water dumping into the lake. Back-to-back casts to that muddy inflow produced keepers on a jig and pig. Four in the live well a little before noon, one of them over four pounds, made me feel pretty good.
At 1:00 I cranked up for the third time and ran a half mile to another good series of coves, but they produced nothing but a few short fish. I was getting worried about filling my limit.
At 2:45 I went back to the muddy water inflow and caught a short fish from it. Working up the bank I cast my jig to a grassbed and my line started moving straight to the boat. I set the hook and a solid keeper came up and came off.
I hate to set the hook on a fish swimming toward me. I think they get the lead on a Texas rig, shaky head or jig in their mouth and are clamped down so hard the hook does not move on the hook set and they come off, just like this one that made me feel sick.
I got the boat closer to the bank and cast ahead of it. A few casts later my line moved out and I set the hook and landed my fifth keeper. Since it was 15 minutes to weigh-in I didn’t make another cast, just headed to the ramp.
I felt lucky to land a limit on such a messy dangerous day.
