Last Sunday five members and guests of the Flint River Bass Club fished our September tournament at Lake Oconee.  After eight hours of casting, from 7:00 AM – 3:00 PM, we weighed in eight bass weighing about 15 pounds. There were no limits and one fisherman didn’t have a keeper.

    Alex Gober won with three bass weighing 4.93 pounds. Brent Drake placed second with two at 4.31 pounds and had big fish with a 2.92 pound largemouth.  Don Gober had two keepers weighing 3.62 pounds for third and my one bass weighing 1.80 pounds was fourth.

    Oddly enough, a Facebook memory showed up Sunday showing one year ago I placed fourth in the Flint River tournament at Oconee with one bass weighing about 1.80 pounds. The more things change the more they stay the same, I guess.

I always say September is the meanest month for bass fishing.  The water is as hot as it gets and the oxygen content is as low as it gets all year.  The fish have been beat up since early spring, seeing artificial baits just about every day. So they are as smart and wary as they can be.

I used to say by September bass in local lakes know the name and price of every lure Berry’s Sporting Goods sells and can probably tell you where to find them on the shelf in the store!

I had a good feeling I could catch a bass out of grass beds on topwater first thing that morning, and I guess I was right.  A few minutes after starting I caught a 13.5 inch largemouth on a floating worm. Unfortunately, the size limit at Oconee is 14 inches so it did no good.

    After more than an hour of trying that pattern with no more bites, I saw a lone dock back in a cove. Often a single piece of cover like and isolated dock is a good bet for a bite.

I got no bites around the dock but while scanning around it with my forward facing sonar I spotted a small brush top off to the side of the dock. It looked like a fish was holding beside it. I cast a small jig to the brush and it never hit bottom.

I set the hook as my line moved out and landed my one keeper.  Without the Garmin Panoptix I would never have known that brush and fish was there.

Later in the day, as seems usual lately, as I idled over a point I spotted some brush and rocks out in 15 feet of water on my sonar. I took the boat out of gear and cast a shaky head behind the boat as it stopped. When it hit bottom my line jumped and started moving toward deep water.

Unfortunately, that direction was across the back of my boat. I set the hook and a strong fish pulled back, and I could not control it. It cut my line on my prop!

I fished grass, blowdowns, docks, rock piles and boulders the rest of the day and caught a few short bass, but no keepers. 

The last one hit with less than five minutes to fish. I cast my weightless worm to the edge of a grassbed, saw the grass a foot to the left wave as a fish came out of it and hit my worm.

Just like the first one that morning, it was 13.5 inches long! But thats not why i fish!