Saturday, December 7, 17 members of the Potato Creek Bassmasters fished our last tournament of the year at Jackson.  After eight hours of casting, we brought in 38 12-inch keeper bass weighing about 54 pounds. Almost all of them were spots. There were five five-fish limits and seven fishermen didn’t have keeper.   

I won with five weighing 7.89 pounds, Mitchell Cardell placed second with five at 7.11 pounds, Raymond English was third with five at 7.01 pounds and Trent Grainger came in fourth with five weighing 6.42 pounds. Doug Acree had big fish with a 3.27 pounder.   

I started on deep rocky banks and fished them all day.  My first keeper hit a jig and pig slowly crawled down the dropping rocks at 7:30 and was a 2.98-pound spot, so I had a good start.  About an hour later I caught two more keepers on the jig on back to back cast on the end of a rocky point.   

At 9:30 I missed two bites on the jig by a log on a bluff bank, then landed my fourth keeper on a shaky head thrown to the same log.  I guess the smaller bait got in the fish’s mouth better.   

For the next three hours I tried hard but got no bites.  Then I tried to skip my bait under a dock, got hung on it and got a bad backlash.  After easing up to the dock and getting my bait, I let the boat drift against the dock while picking out the backlash.  My jig was hanging off the end of the rod, down in the water about six feet deep by the dock.   

My fifth keeper grabbed the jig and about jerked the rod out of my hand, setting the hook on itself.  It was on of those fish just meant to be caught.  I got another keeper at 1:00 on the same bank as the first one I caught that morning.   

With about an hour left to fish I was working up a long point in the middle of a wide cove. My boat was about 50 yards off the bank and pointed toward the bank as I cast to it.   

I heard a boat enter the cove behind me to my right.  He slowed way down, making a huge wake, went behind me, up the left side of the point then across it in front of me, about 20 yards off the bank.  Then he sped up and went further back in the cove.   

I don’t know whether he was an idiot, inconsiderate slob, or mad because I was fishing “his” place. He was in a bass boat, and I hate other fishermen that are so stupid.  I kept hoping he would run aground on the rocks up shallow on that point.    If you fish much, you just have to put up with fools like that.