Last weekend 15 members and guests of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our April tournament at Clarks Hill. In two days we landed 95 keeper bass weighing about 168 pounds. There were 13 five-bass limits in the two days and no one zeroed both days.

I won with ten weighing 23.37 pounds, Sam Smith was second with nine at 18.68 pounds, Billy Roberts placed third with ten weighing 17.91 pounds and Niles Murray placed fourth with ten at 14.34 pounds. Guest Randall Sharpton had big fish with a 4.81 pound largemouth.

I went over early and looked for bedding bass Wednesday afternoon up around Raysville but there was nothing I could see. Thursday morning I hit a couple of blowthroughs with no luck. Then while idling up to a rocky point I saw a wad of fish under bait in ten to 12 feet of water.

I stopped the boat and threw everything I had tied on at them – not a hit. So I tied on a bait I had never caught a bass on before, a Fishhead Spin, but it seemed right, and it was. First cast crawling it along bottom I got a three pounder. After that I sat there and tried to learn how to fish it and hook the fish. In an hour I caught seven or eight between 2.5 and 4.5 pounds and lost three that size. Usually I would not try to catch that many before a tournament but I wanted to try to figure out how to use that bait.

The rest of that day I landed exactly two more keepers in six hours. Both hit a Carolina rig. The fishing was very tough.

Friday morning my partner Kwong Yu met me before daylight and we checked out some more rocky points. We found fish and bait on one and I got a channel cat and two hybrids, nothing else. After that we started hitting points and he got a 4.5 to 5 pounder on a Topwater Spook but we caught just four keepers that whole day.

Sat morning we ran to the point I found on Thursday and I got 11 keepers in less than 90 minutes there. The rest of the day I landed one more! I did have a 4.5 pounder jump and throw a Gunfish topwater plug right at the boat after fighting it on a long cast at 1:00. My best five weighed 15.62 and put me in first place. One of the five weighed about 2.5 pounds, the rest were identical quadruplicates.

Sunday was not as good. We started at the good point and I caught four small keepers and broke one off that got me against the rocks in first two hours. Then we started running points. Kwong got two on Spooks to go with his two the day before on top, he never caught one on a Fishhead Spin, he had no confidence in it even though I was catching them.

I landed my fifth keeper on a Carolina rig at 11:00. It was the only fish we caught back in a pocket all weekend. I got two more that culled two of the first ones I caught, both hit jig head worms on a rocky point. My best five that day was only 7.75 but enough to hold on to first place.

That was a relief. Several times over the past five or six years, including last year, I would be in first in this tournament after the first day but drop because of a poor catch the second day.