Lake Wedowee Club Tournament

Lake Wedowee can be a frustrating lake for a bass tournament, as members of the Potato Creek Bassmasters found out in mid-September. You can keep any size spotted bass there but the club has a 12 inch minimum size limit. And largemouth between 13 and 16 inches long must be released, so in club tournament a 12.5 inch largemouth counts but a 14 inch largemouth has to be released.

Niles Murray told me he landed several nice largemouth in the slot that had to be let go and he could not weigh them in. It can drive you crazy to have a 12 inch spot in the live well then have to release 14 and 15 inch long largemouth!

In their September tournament 12 club members fished eight hours to land 38 bass weighing 39.20 pounds. You can see not many fish over the slot were landed! There were three limits of five bass and everyone caught at least one keeper.

Michael Cox had a limit weighing 5.84 pounds for first place. James Beasley landed five weighing 4.98 pounds for second, Ryan Edge came in third with five at 4.82 pounds for third and Mike Gatlin rounded out the top four with four keepers weighing 3.97 pounds. Wesley Gunnels came in fifth with three fish weighing 3.87 pounds and his 1.76 pound bass gave him big fish in the tournament.

You can catch a lot of small bass to eat at Wedowee, and have fun catching some bigger largemouth, just be prepared to let them go!

West Point Lake Club Tournament

The last Sunday in September 13 members and guests of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our September tournament in the monsoon that afternoon. At West Point we can weigh in spotted bass over 12 inches long and largemouth over 14 inches long.

After eight hours of fishing we brought in 31 bass weighing about 48 pounds. There were four limits and four people didn’t have a keeper. Eight of the bass were largemouth and 24 were spotted bass.

Kwong Yu won with a limit weighing 11.68 pounds. I came in second with five weighing 8.36 pounds and my 3.41 pound spot was big fish. Third went to Niles Murray with five weighing 6.78 pounds and Sam Smith was fourth with four at 6.64 pounds.

My boat was still in the shop so Kwong let me fish with him. We ran to his favorite spot to start and cast for about 15 minutes without a bite. Then, for the next 20 minutes or so it seemed something hit our topwater baits on almost every cast. He landed four keepers and I got three in that time, and I missed over twice as many as I hooked. I guess my timing was off.

After about 30 minutes without a bite we left. I suggested a point I like to fish and Kwong got a nice keeper there on his first cast, but we got no more bites. From then till almost noon we caught some small fish including some little hybrids that came up schooling.

I landed my fourth keeper by a stump on a jig and pig that passed up Kwong’s Fluke. Then Kwong got two good largemouth of about three pounds each and I got my fifth keeper, a small spot, then the big spot hit.

It got real slow after the heavy rain started and we didn’t do much until Kwong got another three pound largemouth just before we had to head in. Kwong had four of the largemouth weighed in – half of them!