Back in August, 2017. I drove down to Bainbridge and met Matt Baty at Wingate’s Lunker Lodge Saturday morning to get information for my October Map of the Month article in both Georgia and Alabama Outdoor News. Since Seminole is a border lake between the two states the same article will run in both magazines.

    Matt grew up in Faceville, right on the lake, and has fished it all his life. He now guides there and on nearby Lake Eufaula and keeps up with the bass and knows where they are and what they are eating.

    He and his partner had won an evening tournament on Seminole on Thursday night, landing five bass weighing 14 pounds in the three-hour tournament.  It amazed me when he told me the tournament launched in Bainbridge, a 30-minute fast boat ride up the Flint River from where he caught the fish.

    And he had to make the run back in the dark.  That meant they had less than two hours to actually fish when they got to their honey hole at the mouth of Spring Creek.  I have made that run many times in tournaments and you have to follow a twisting, turning channel. Its a good thing he knows the lake well to make it in the dark.

    Matt took me to the grassy flat with hydrilla forming a mat on the surface along the edges of the deeper Spring Creek channel.  We started with topwater but got no bites, but when he switched to a crankbait he caught five keepers up to two pounds each on five consecutive casts. That is hole #1 in the article.

    I landed a three-pound largemouth on a worm there but then it got tough.  We fished all morning without another keeper but then, on what is hole #7 in the article, he landed three bass about three pounds each by punching a plastic bait through the hydrilla behind a 1.5-ounce sinker.

    I don’t even own a sinker that big and did not try his method.  He offered me one but you have to stand up to fish that way and my back will not let me do it more than a few minutes.

    Seminole is a beautiful lake and has a lot of three and four-pound bass in it.  Fishing there seems much better this time of year than around here and is well worth the four-hour drive!

This Map of the Month article is available to GON subscribers at https://www.gon.com/fishing/seminoles-fall-bass-with-matt-baty