If life gives you lemons, make lemonade – or margaritas! Sometimes what seems like bad luck can turn into a good thing. Take advantage of those times. Good luck and bad luck while fishing a tournament at Clarks Hill proved this to me.
I went over to Clarks Hill last Wednesday to get ready for the Flint River Bass Club tournament this past weekend. Thursday morning I got up and drove over to Soap Creek Marina, about 18 miles from my trailer at Raysville Boat Club, to try to find some fish in the 88 degree water.
At 1:30 I ran out of gas. No problem, my boat has two 25 gallon tanks, and the other one had over ten gallons of gas in it. But I could not get the motor to pick it up. After 15 minutes of trying to get the valve to switch over I gave up and got on the trolling motor.
I was about five miles from the ramp so I was not too worried, but the sun was extremely hot and the going slow. It took me over two hours to get in. Just as I got to the ramp a bad thunderstorm hit. It is much harder to load a bass boat on the trailer without the gas motor so I got soaked. Really, I was not much wetter from the rain than I was from sweat.
After filling up the empty tank in town the motor cranked right up. I still haven’t figured out the problem. But it pretty much ruined my day of fishing, and it was my birthday!
The lemonade part of running out of gas happened going in. I watched my depthfinder/GPS unit while going to the ramp and as I crossed one big cove I saw the symbol for an underwater house foundation back in it on the GPS.
The next afternoon as I headed in from a day of practice where I had found a couple of small patterns and caught a few bass I remember the foundation and rode over it. My depthfinder showed what looked like rocks with fish on them at 20 feet deep. I dropped a worm down to it and caught a nice 2.5 pound largemouth.
During the tournament Saturday Jordan and I caught our three biggest bass on those rocks. I would have never found those fish except for my bad luck!
In the tournament eight members of the club fished for 16 hours to land 24 keepers weighing about 44 pounds.
There was one five-bass limit in the two days and two fishermen didn’t catch a keeper.
Niles Murray won with nine keepers weighing 15.51 pounds and had the only limit. Chuck Croft caught only four keepers but one weighed 6.02 pounds for big fish and his total weighed of 12.19 pounds was good for second place. My six keepers weighing 10.40 pounds was third and Jordan McDonald came in fourth with three weighing 3.49 pounds.
Saying fishing was tough puts it way too mildly. Saturday morning Jordan and I started on a bridge riprap at blast off and I quickly caught a two pound bass on a spinnerbait. I thought that was a good sign, I had caught several keepers last year in the same tournament on that bridge. But after two hours of fishing it we had not caught another fish.
We then went to the foundation and during the next 90 minutes I landed two good two pound fish and Jordan got one. At 9:30 we went to a small creek where I had caught some keepers the day before on topwater in the middle of the day around hydrilla and fished it for four hours, and Jordan got his two other keepers and I got one. But they were much smaller than the day before.
We went back to the foundation to fish the last hour of the day and did not get a bite.
On Sunday we started on the bridge again. After almost an hour I had lost one keeper that jumped and threw a crankbait. Then I lost another one on a topwater plug, but caught two keepers on top by 7:30. We then went to the foundation where I hooked and lost another good fish, but got no more bites.
We fished hard until the end of the tournament, trying the hydrilla and another bridge, but got no more keepers. It was a very frustrating after the sun got high both days.
It was very hot both days and uncomfortable to fish. I would much rather fish at night this time of year. It is cooler and more comfortable and the fish generally bite better. But many people don’t like night fishing for a variety of reasons.
At night I like to fish a black plastic worm on a rocky bottom. Bass can see much better than we can since their eyes take in about five times as much light as do ours. And their lateral line allows them to feel or “hear” vibrations in the water, like the lead on a worm rig scrapping along a rocky bottom.
It is a challenge, but kind of fun, too, to try to feel a bite on a worm, get your line tight and set the hook in the dark. And it is hard to land a big fish since you can’t see it to net it in the dark. If you shine a flashlight in the water to see it the bass will spook and take off, and often break your line.
Even with the problems, it is still fun!