Summer’s hot days are tough times to catch big bass, or any other size many times. The hot water makes bass metabolism high, but it also makes then feed less and confines them to smaller areas of water. And they feed mostly at night, especially during a full moon.

Bass are skinny, too. Their high metabolism makes them burn energy fast and they don’t feed enough to regain body weight lost during the stress of the spawn.
A bass that might weigh seven pounds pre spawn in April might weigh only 5.5 pounds in July, with a big head but thin body.

But some can be caught, as the West Point results below show. But both it and Sinclair results show how tough fishing can be for club fishermen. Not only is it hot, boat traffic keeps you rocking from waves, and getting bites is a slow process.

At Sinclair weekend before last eight Flint River
Bass Club members faced all those things at our July tournament. In eight hours of fishing, we landed 15 keeper bass weighing about 20 pounds. There was one limit and three people did not have a fish.

Chuck Croft won with three weighing 5.50 pounds and had big fish with a 3.60 pound largemouth. Don Gober had the limit and placed second with 5.40 pounds, Doug Acree was third with three at 3.75 pounds and my two at 3.0 was fourth. Alex Gober had two weighing 2.0 pounds for fifth.

I had one of those good feelings that if I started on a certain seawall with topwater I would catch some fish. Sometimes those feelings work, but at after an hour and a half, I had not had a bite on anything.

Then I caught a keeper by a dock on a shaky head worm. It was about two feet deep. Going between docks a few minutes later I made what I thought was a useless cast right against a seawall with a weightless Senko. I could see the bottom and I just made the cast to be doing something, but my line moved to the side and I landed my second keeper.

That was it. I missed one more bite from a bass that hit on top in the shade and caught some warmouth on the Senko on other seawalls, but no more bass.