Don’t forget to renew your fishing license. Until last year new fishing licenses were always due on April 1st, but starting last year they are good for one year from the day you got them. So, if you renewed early last year, they will expire early this year. Don’t get caught fishing without a license.
Fishing is getting better with the nice spring weather like we had Friday. I fished at West Point and Oconee last week and the bass fishing was fair. Based on the number of boats on the lake fishing for crappie, that fishing must have been pretty good.
In a Spalding County Sportsman Club tournament last Sunday at West Point 18 members and guests fished for 9 hours to bring in 44 keepers weighing about 75 pounds. All but 7 of those keepers were spotted bass, the largemouth were much harder to find.
Butch Duerr won it all with a 5 bass limit weighing 14.62 pounds and had big fish with a 6.16 pound bass. He said he caught them on spinnerbaits in wind blown pockets. Although Butch had a great catch he was still disappointed since a much bigger bass had broken his line. Butch said the one that got away looked twice as big as the six pounder he landed. It jumped trying to throw his spinnerbait and he got a good look at it.
Gary Hattaway placed second with a limit weighing 9.54 pounds and he said he caught his fish on plastic baits. Gary also said he had lost a good bass, one around four pounds, when it pulled off from his hook. Billy Roberts placed 3rd with five bass weighing 7.59 pounds and I placed 4th with 3 bass weighing 6.59 pounds.
I started the morning by hooking and losing a bass that looked like it weighed about 4 pounds. It fought to the surface and then just pulled off. About an hour later I cast a different crankbait to a shallow point and something thumped it. When I set the hook it fought hard, running like a bass. Then my line went slack. I almost threw my rod and reel in the water.
When I reeled in my plug, it had a big scale stuck on one of the hooks. The scale had a definite red edge – I had hooked a carp. Fortunately for my mental attitude, I hooked and landed a largemouth weighing a little over 3 pounds a few minutes later. I have to admit, when the fish jumped, my heart stopped. I was afraid I would lose it.
On Wednesday Jim Berry and I went back to West Point. He started out by catching the first four or five bass to come in the boat, all on crankbaits, then I finally caught a spotted bass on a Carolina Rigged Baby Brush Hog. Jim caught a couple more bass then I had a streak of catching about five in a row. We ended the day with 14 keeper spotted bass and several largemouth.
On Friday I took Zane Lee and his son Andy to Oconee for a bass fishing trip. Zane had bought the fishing trip at the Friends of the NRA Banquet, and I hoped we would have a really good day. And it started out that way. Andy caught two small bass on a spinnerbait the first cove we fished.
At the second spot, I caught a small bass on a crankbait then Andy hooked the biggest bass of the day, a nice 3 pound fish. A few minutes later he hooked a bigger bass, one the looked to be about four pounds, but it came off the second time it jumped.
A little further down the bank Andy caught another keeper fish on his spinnerbait, then added a throwback. At the next place we stopped I caught a small keeper on a Carolina Rigged Baby Brush Hog but then we went for about an hour without a bite before I caught two more keepers on the Carolina rig. By now it was after lunch and the morning cloud cover had blown away.
Although we fished until 5:00 PM we did not hook another fish. I had lots of excuses, the clear skies made them stop biting, the crowds of jet skies and pleasure boaters made them quit biting, or I was wearing the wrong shirt. It must have been one of those things.
We had a beautiful, if somewhat frustrating day. On the way home Andy was making his plans for killing a turkey Saturday morning. If he hunted as well as he fished Friday morning, he should have gotten at least two gobblers!