Category Archives: Tournament Fishing

Spalding County Sportsman Club May Tournament at West Point Lake 

Last Sunday 11 members of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our May tournament at West Point Lake.  We fished nine hours, from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM, to land 43 bass weighing about 74 pounds.  There were six five bass limits and one person did not weigh in a keeper.

    Raymond English blew us all away with a great catch of five bass weighing 17.01 pounds and had a 5.33 pound largemouth for big fish.  Glenn Anderson came in second with five at 12.58 pounds and had a 5.12 pound largemouth for second biggest bass.  Doug Acree had a five bass limit weighing 7.87 pounds for third, Lee Hancock had five weighing 7.60 pounds for fourth and my five at 6.88 pounds was fifth.

    I had a very frustrating start.  On a rocky bank that usually has some feeding fish at daylight, I hooked four bass that looked like keepers, and lost all four.  Two jumped and threw my buzzbait although had a trailer hook on it. And two jumped and threw my popping plug.

At 7:30 I finally hooked and landed a keeper spot on a shaky head worm, then at 9:00 I landed another keeper spot on a Carolina rigged worm.  I had tried a variety of places and baits without much luck and that continued until 11:30.

I decided to try something different so I went to one of the few docks in the area and skipped a whacky rigged Senko under it.  I saw a fish swim over and go down after it and hit it, and I landed a very skinny 16 inch largemouth.

The next three docks I fished produced two more keepers, one spot and another skinny largemouth, giving me my limit by noon.  Then it got tough again. I kept looking for docks to fish and caught another largemouth that culled one of my small spots at 2:00.

While Zane backed my trailer in for me I skipped the Senko to the dock at the ramp, saying this is my last cast today. I landed my seventh keeper, a small spot that did not cull, before I had to load my boat.  

BASS Founder Ray Scott Dead At 88 Years Old

RAY SCOTT DEAD AT 88

from The Fishing Wire

Ray Scott Dead at 88

Ray Scott, the man who founded Fishing Tackle Retailer (FTR) and the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society (BASS) and forged the modern sportfishing industry died in Montgomery, Alabama, Sunday night of natural causes. He was 88 years old.

Born in Montgomery in 1933, Scott’s legend is well known among bass anglers. He was an insurance salesman who dreamed of taking bass fishing to a wider audience. In 1967, while waiting out some bad weather on a fishing trip, Scott sat in his motel room and had an epiphany. He would create a bass tournament format that would be fair, honest, and compelling. He dreamed of a time when professional bass fishing would appear on television alongside traditional spectator sports.

“It all just came to me,” Scott said. “I knew it would work.”

In June of 1967, he organized and conducted the All-American bass fishing tournament on Beaver Lake in Arkansas — the first modern bass competition and the template for all that have followed. Six months later, he started BASS, one of the largest fishing membership organizations in history. In 1968, he published the first issue of Bassmaster Magazine. In 1984, he launched “The Bassmasters” television program. About that same time, Scott started Fishing Tackle Retailer magazine as a division of BASS. It was his foray into the larger tackle industry and created a platform through which he could speak to retailers and industry professionals across the country and across all angling demographics.

“He created an entire industry,” said FTR co-publisher Brian Thurston. “Ray was probably the most influential individual sportfishing has ever seen and one of the best promoters of all time.”

It would be almost impossible to overstate the importance of Scott in the bass fishing world specifically and in the sportfishing world generally.

While growing BASS — which peaked at about 750,000 members and still boasts over half a million — Scott impacted virtually every other aspect of modern sportfishing, from water quality to safety to catch-and-release. He was a visionary, a trailblazer, an evangelist, an igniter, a showman, a salesman, a marketer, an entrepreneur, a publisher, a conservationist, and a leader. Most of those who work in the bass fishing industry and many in the sportfishing industry owe their careers to him.

Scott sold BASS and FTR to a group of investors in 1986, but he stayed involved as an executive and as the face of BASS. In the 1990s, he created Ray Scott Outdoors, a communications and marketing firm for fishing industry products and companies. Throughout the ’90s, he was a fixture at industry trade and consumer shows.

But fishing was not Scott’s only interest or passion, he also founded the Whitetail Institute of North America, advancing nutrition and habitat efforts for America’s favorite big game animal. And Scott was involved in politics, supporting the presidential bids of George H.W. Bush in 1980, 1988, and 1992. For several decades, Scott dedicated much of his time and resources to supporting his church — Pintlala Baptist Church in Pintlala, Alabama.

He is survived by his wife, Susan, and four children. Funeral services have yet to be announced.

Flint River Bass Club May West Point Bass Tournament

Last Saturday nine members of the Flint River Bass Club fished our May tournament at West Point. We cast from 6:30 AM to 2:30 PM to land 21 keeper bass weighing about 30 pounds.  Three people had five bass limits and two members did not catch a fish.

Niles Murray won with five bass weighing 8.05 pounds and had a 2.99 pound largemouth for big fish.  Lee Hancock came in second with five weighing 6.19 pounds, my five at 5.88 pounds was third and Doug Acree placed fourth with four at 5.46 pounds.

I have a favorite shallow gravel point in the spring at West Point near the dam. Shad spawn on it and I have caught many fish on it in April and May in past tournaments.

In one tournament about ten years ago I got seven hits on my first seven casts with a topwater popper. I landed five, putting my limit in the live well in less than ten minutes.  They were 14-inch spots and I ended up culling all of them later but that was a fast, fun ten minutes!

Shad were spawning there Saturday morning and I caught two keeper spots and two hybrids in the few minutes before the sunlight hit the water.  Then it got tough.  I had only one bite, a small keeper fish that jumped and threw my buzzbait at about 9:00 AM. 

The wind got strong and it was surprisingly cold.   I headed up the lake to fish a protected creek at 11:00 AM and noticed a small secondary point that I like to fish in a cove. And it looked protected from the wind.

I pulled in there and caught three keepers, filling my limit in the next 30 minutes.  Although I fished hard I got only one more bite, a keeper that culled my smallest spot, at 2:00, just 30 minutes before weigh-in.

Two of my bass and both hybrids came on a topwater popper, two on a Carolina rig and one on a shaky head worm.

Winning A Sportsman Club Tournament At Lake Oconee

This five pounder was big fish and helped me win.

Last Sunday, March 20, 14 members of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our March tournament at Lake Oconee. After fishing from 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM we brought 37 keeper largemouth longer than 14 inches to the scales. There was one five fish limit and two fishermen didn’t weigh in a keeper.

My five at 12.68 pounds won and I had a 5.04 pound largemouth for big fish.  Raymond English had four weighing 9.40 pounds for second, Wayne Teal placed third with four at 7.68 pounds, George Roberts had four at 7.22 pounds for fourth and Niles Murray placed fifth with four weighing 7.13 pounds.

Will Mclean fished with me and we started on a grassbed I had a feeling would produce a fish. It did, I caught a keeper and a short fish on a swim jig within a few casts. Then it got tough as the sun got on the water.

At about 10:00 Will cast beside a dock and got a bite but missed it. He got that fish to hit two more times, hooking a good keeper on the third bite. 

My next fish hit my shaky head worm near the boat and when I set the hook it came flying out of the water and the hook came out of its mouth in the air.  But it fell into the boat! Some fish are just meant to be caught.

At noon we had only those three in the livewell so we decided to change tactics. We went to a small main lake cove from the small but bigger creek where we had been fishing.  It had deeper water and was closer to the main river.  I hoped this would mean more fish had moved up from their winter homes.

On the point of the cove a deep brush pile produced my third keeper, one that just barely touched the 14-inch line on the keeper board.  Then my fourth keeper hit my shaky head out from a small grass bed inside the point.

Will got his second keeper off the next grass bed then we both caught some throwbacks.  Going into the cove I noticed a waypoint on my GPS and remembered there were some rock piles out in 12 to 15 feet of water. A few casts to them produced a couple of short fish then a two-pounder hit my shaky head. I had a limit at 1:00!  But with the bare keeper I figured I had only about seven pounds.

I cranked up and went across the mouth of the cove to go around it again and saw another bass boat coming. Sure enough, Zane and JR pulled up on the point I had just left and started fishing!  Will and I fished around the cove toward them and caught a couple more short fish.

When we met Zane and JR, with then on one dock and us on the next one, I cast my shaky head to the dock and a bass thumped it. When I set the hook I started yelling for the net, a big fish flashed in the water and tried to run under the dock.

A I fought it I flashed back three years to another tournament and a similar day. On another dock I hooked a big fish, pulled it away from the dock post three times and got it within a couple of feet of the net. Then my line went slack, it just came off. That fish was every bit of eight pounds.

As I pulled this fish to the top so Will could get the net under it, my hook popped out and flew over the boat. I felt sick for a second, then Will raised up the net – with the 5.04 pounder in it! Talk about a fish that was just meant to get caught.

    Will said that fish was really his, so I gave it to him – right after weigh-in.

We fished the rest of the day and landed several more short fish, and I got two more keepers on a shaky head worm.  I culled three times, including the first fish I caught that morning.

How I Fished A Windy Cold Tournament At Lake Eufaula

See the leadup and practice for this tournament here.

The fishing was as bad as expected. Twenty-five members of the club fished for nine hours on Saturday in the ridiculous, dangerous wind and seven more on Sunday, a much better day. But we caught only 29 bass weighing about 81 pounds. There were 13 zeros and only three limits.

As always someone catches them. Sam Smith won with ten weighing 30.65 pounds and had big fish with a 5.36 pound largemouth. His partner Carl Heidle had seven weighing 16.95 pounds for second, Raymond English had four weighing 7.83 pounds for third and David Martin had four at 7.79 pounds for fourth. My four at 6.82 pounds was good for fifth.

When we finally blasted off, I ran around to what I thought would be a protected area behind an island but the wind was so strong I could not fish. That made me go to the small creek hoping the wind would not be too bad in there, and there were a few areas I could fish without losing my cap to the wind.

I was pitching a jig and pig to the edge of grassbeds, letting it fall to the bottom in water a few inches to a few feet deep. At about 10:00 I got a bite but when I set the hook my line broke in the reel – a sure sign I had missed a bad place in it about 20 feet up when I checked then night before. To add “insult to injury,” the keeper fish jumped trying to get rid of my jig stuck in its jaw!

I finally got another bite at about 1:00 but the wind had my line bowed out and I missed the fish. Finally at 2:00 one hit my jig and I landed a 1.64 pounder, and was proud to have something to weigh in the first day.

Sunday as much colder but the wind did not blow.  For the first hour or so I had to dip my rod in the water after every cast to melt the ice out of the guides. And it started just as bad, with no bites until about 11:00. Then a fish grabbed my jig and ran toward the boat but spit it out before I could set the hook.

At noon I finally landed one small keeper and about gave up since I was tired, there was three hours left to fish and I did not have much hope. But at 2:00
I went to the grassbed where I caught my keeper on Saturday and caught a decent keeper, then got a second one off a nearby dock on a shaky head worm. Then it was time to go in and face the results of two tough days!

I hope the weather settles down soon!!

What Does It Mean To Be A Professional Bass Fisherman?

Pro bass fishermen at the Bassmasters Classic give young antlers advice on becoming a pro bass fisherman


WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A PRO

from The Fishing Wire

What It Means To Be A Pro

Forestville, WI (February 9, 2022) – What defines a professional angler? Ask someone off the street and they’ll likely describe fancy boats, bright lights and big fish. Ask those who stand atop the leaderboard, however, and they’ll tell a different story – one of hard work, determination, and the efforts of many other industry pros who have helped them succeed.

“You can’t get to the top without others to lift you up,” says, Patrick Neu, president of the 1,400-member non-profit National Professional Anglers Association (NPAA). “Nobody reaches the pinnacle of professionalism in this industry without a lot of help. That’s exactly why the NPAA is inviting fishing industry workers of every type to join our ranks. Our purpose is to grow and protect sportfishing while providing our members the tools and association benefits needed to increase their professionalism and meet individualized goals.”

To be sure, professionalism in the fishing industry is wide ranging, a point not lost on the organization and its members. “Being a fishing industry ‘pro’ is a pretty loose term,” says NPAA member Chad Pipkens, a ten-year full-time veteran of the Bassmaster Elite Series and five-time Bassmaster Classic qualifier from Dewitt, Michigan, who spent several years prior honing his skills on a variety of smaller trails before acquiring the knowledge, money and flexibility of time needed to compete at the highest levels.

“Professional doctors diagnose and treat patients, teachers instruct students, pro golfers receive PGA cards, and electricians need a license to perform electrical work,” Pipkens says. “These are all well-defined fields of specialization. By comparison, the fishing world encompasses many different job opportunities. Sure, tournament anglers, captains and guides are fishing professionals, but so are the highly skilled mechanics that work on your engine as well as the folks who run the marina, design lures, sell fishing tackle, manage anglers and staff the tournament trails.

“To me,” Pipkens continued, “anyone making meaningful money or striving to earn a living in this industry should qualify as a pro. If you don’t want to be on the water day in and day out, but you still want to be in the industry, you can find the contacts amongst our membership to maybe make that happen.”

“Anyone making meaningful money or striving to earn a living in this industry should qualify as a pro.”

According to Pipkens, the NPAA does a great job of teaching aspiring pros how to run a fishing-related business through their seminars, annual conference and approachable members who have already achieved success. “NPAA membership can shorten your learning curve and raise your professionalism at any level,” he points out. “It’s a great organization for learning the ins and outs of running your own business; whether that’s tech stuff, accounting, how to network or get paid by more than one employer, it certainly can help shorten your learning curve.”

As a pro angler, Pipkens says his life is organized chaos; getting the boat ready, crisscrossing the country, and being on the road for five weeks at a time while never losing his family focus. He often practices on the water from sunrise to sunset. Despite the pressure to win, tournaments are actually the fun part of his routine. “Balancing all the rest,” he says, “is what really makes you a professional.”

For tournament pros, guides and charter captains in particular, there is a ton of preparation that takes place behind the scenes, notes John Campbell, an NPAA founding member and full-time guide. A Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame member inducted in 2018, Campbell managed to win both the Pro Walleye Trail Detroit River and FLW Lake Ouachita championships. He also qualified for a major walleye championship every single year from 1989 to 2011 while on the pro tour. That’s 22 consecutive years, if you’re counting.

Like Pickens, Campbell agrees publicly visible aspects of being a tournament angler or guide help solidify your status as a professional, but the business end of things is vitally important. “Sure, you’ve got to pre-fish, choose your lures, maintain your gear, set up the boat and put in plenty of time on the road,” he notes, “but you also have to learn to book charters, carefully plan out your competition schedule, promote your sponsors and tend to family matters. Earning money and winning tournaments is vital, but also important is finding ways to help grow the sport through sharing knowledge and getting more kids involved.”

As a professional guide, Campbell is in the business of educating anglers. “To me, helping others learn the game is the sign of a true pro,” he states, adding that this is exactly the kind of people you’ll network and rub elbows with in the NPAA. “This organization supported over 100 Future Angler clinics in 2021 alone. With support from the Future Angler Foundation, it’s member volunteers also distributed over 4,000 NPAA Future Pro T-shirts and 3,000 rod/reel combos to kids at NPAA Future Angler education events. That, I believe, is professionalism at its finest.”

For information on joining the NPAA and exploring the many benefits membership provides, visit npaa.net.

Windy Cold Tournament At Lake Eufaula

These two last-hour fish at Eufaula on the second day helped me to a fifth-place finish out of 25 people.

 I usually enjoy the four seasons. Changing weather often makes fishing better and it is less boring. But going through all four seasons and worse last week at Lake Eufaula was a bit much.

    I went down to Lake Point State Park last Tuesday and set up my slide in pickup camper.  The weather was very warm when I went to bed and I knew storms were possible.

    At 5:00 AM someone pounded on my camper and woke me. I thought they said the power was out, but my fan was still running so I turned over to go back to sleep. Then a car horn started blowing, making me look at my phone – there was a Tornado Warning for the campground on it I had not heard!

    I joined all the other campers in the cement block bath house for the next hour!

The rest of Wednesday was decent, with some light showers but little wind. I was able to get out on the lake and look around some. I joined the 196 other bass boats on the water, a Fishers of Men National Championship tournament was scheduled for Thursday through Saturday.  It was a big deal, first and second places in the tournament would win fully rigged bass boats worth either $80,000 or $60,000, depending on place.

Thursday was a nice spring like day, warm weather and sun.  I again looked around, watching the many boats with teams fishing the first day of the tournament.  Most were easing around the shoreline, casting various baits to grassbeds. 

When I went to my favorite small creek I was happy to see just two boats in it fishing, but while I idled around about six other boats ran in, fished a few minutes, then left.  I knew by the start of our tournament Saturday the poor fish would be beat to death, seeing every lure carried by Berry’s Sporting Goods and then some.

Friday the wind was up a little and the misty rain made me sit at my camper and watch the tournament fishermen go round and round in the creek out from the campground.  Weather guessers were saying 20+ MPH winds for Saturday. Most lakes are dangerous with those kinds of winds, and Eufuala is one of the worse.

Fishers of Men announced they were canceling the third day of their tournament due to dangerous conditions. And the Bass Fisherman’s League canceled their big tournament on Oconee for the same reason.

Potato Creek did not cancel, but when Tom Tanner and I idled to the ramp for our set 7:00 blast off, we were told the executive committee delayed our start by 30 minutes. So for 30 minutes Tom and I sat in our boats as the cold wind got about five miles per hour stronger and the temperature dropped another two degrees while everybody else sat in their warm trucks in the parking lot.

how the tournament went for two days

My Winning Pattern At Lake Sinclair In Early March

These two four pounders helped me win and get big fish at Lake Sinclair at the last minute!

Last Sunday, March 6, nine members of the Flint River Bass Club fished our March tournament at Lake Sinclair.  The weather was beautiful for our casting from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM but the bass didn’t seem to care.  We weighed in 29 keeper bass weighing about 47 pounds and had three five-bass limits. No one zeroed.

    My four at 10.63 won and I had as 4.19 pound largemouth for big fish. Chuck Croft placed second with five at 9.15 pounds, Don Gober had five at 9.02 pounds for third and Alex Gober, his grandson fishing with him, had five at 4.86 pounds for fourth.

    Will Mclean fished with me and we headed to some grass beds near the dam where Ricky Layton, showing me around the same time of year two years ago for a GON article, caught five weighing 28 pounds.  But after three hours and several different places, we both had two bites.

    A good keeper bass hit my crankbait on a seawall and jumped and threw it. Then Will hooked and lost what looked like a keeper on a Texas rigged Senko.  A little later Will caught a bass that just barely touched the 12-inch line, then I caught a similar one.

Club rules say a bass must be 12 inches long with its mouth closed on a keeper board to be weighed.  I could make mine touch the 12-inch line, barely, but worried about it. Sometimes in the excitement of catching one I do not measure it correctly.

Around 10:30 I cast my bladed jig to a grassbed on a point and hooked a keeper out in front of it. At 11:30 Will cast to the middle of a shallow cove, said “I got one” and a huge fish swirled on top. He got it to the boat and I netted it, but it was a big blue catfish. Will’s new scales said it weighed ten pounds but it looked much bigger.

At 2:00, with about 45 minutes left to fish I was pretty disgusted. We went into one of my favorite small creeks. As we fished down a bank with a big grassbed on it, I told Will I had never caught a fish past the last small dock on it, it was very shallow. But Niles Murray caught a keeper back in it when we fished together a few years ago.

I cast my bladed jig back in it and my line started going sideways. When I set the hook the 4.19 pounder jumped, it was only a foot deep and it had nowhere to go but up!  When I got it to the boat I let it go around the trolling motor but managed to pull the motor and bass up and Will got it in the net by lying down on the deck and reaching forward. That fish was just meant to get caught.

I caught another keeper on a shaky head on the next dock, then started around the other arm of the cove. Again I told Will I had never caught a bass way back in it, and he reminded me of what had just happened.

As luck would have it, way back in it I pitched my shaky head to a seawall about a foot of water and felt a tap and my line started moving out. When I set the hook a 4.13 pound largemouth fought hard but I managed to keep it away from the trolling motor and Will netted it.

We went back to the dock where I caught my keeper and Will got a 3.16 pounder off the seawall beside it, again about a foot deep. That was it, we had to go in.

I don’t know if it was time of day, location or what but I wish it had started earlier, or we had more time to fish before the time ended. This time of year fishing is often better late in the day after the sun warms the water some. It was 62 degrees in that creek at 2:00 and I am sure those fish were thinking about bedding.

While waiting for Will to back the trailer in, I checked my smallest fish and decide it had shrunk, so I just weighed in four.

So Close In a Lake Sinclair Club Tournament

Last Saturday 25 members of the Potato Creek Bassmasters fished our January tournament at Lake Sinclair.  After eight hours of casting from 7:30 AM to 8:30 PM, we brought 73 12-inch keeper bass weighing about 112 pounds to the scales. There were eight limits and six zeros.

Robert Howell won with five weighting 9.04 pounds and Raymond English placed second with five at 8.67 pounds. Michael Cox came in third with five weighing 7.88 pounds and my four weighing 7.55 pounds was fourth.  Stevie Wright had big fish with a 4.37 pound largemouth.

The water in Little River was very muddy but the Oconee River and creeks downstream of the mouth of Little River were a decent color. I just knew I could catch some fish on a crankbait in the 52-degree water in the clearer areas, but at 1:00 my two bites were a two-pound channel cat on a crankbait and a bream on a spoon, jigging it in brush 18 feet deep.

At 1:00 I met a boat going down the bank and they fished my favorite dock before I could get to it, then left. I started to leave, too, but noticed they threw just to the front post, not the back post. That dock has some rock behind it and is usually good for a keeper.
    I cast my shaky head behind the dock and sure enough it started moving out. But when I set the hook my line broke!  That really disgusted me but I kept casting and managed to catch two keeper bass and a five pound flathead cat on a crankbait and two more keeper bass on my shaky head the last two hours of the tournament.

I was shocked but pleased to place but kept thinking if I had just landed that bass behind the dock and it weighed two pounds, I would have won! And if frogs had wings, they would not bump their butt every time they hopped!

A Late February Tournament At West Point Lake

 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!