Sunday, January 9, eight members of the Flint River Bass Club fished our January tournament at Jackson Lake. After casting from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM, we brought 23 keeper bass weighing about 26 pounds to the scales. There were three five-bass limits and one fisherman did not have a keeper.
Alex Gober won it all with five weighing 7.35 pounds and had a 1.80 pounder for big fish. Niles Murray came in second with five at 5.52 pounds and
Doug Acree was third with five weighing 4.34. Lee Hancock came in fourth with two weighing 2.50 pounds, beating my two at 2.48 pounds by .02 pounds!
It was a tough day. Niles said he caught his five in about an hour. This time of year there is often a “bite window,” a short time when if you are in the right place at the right time you can catch fish.
New member Will McLean fished with me and we fished hard. But at 2:46 with five minutes left to fish I had gotten only one bite, a four-inch crappie that hit a spoon. I found fish in many places, some of them set up under baitfish and looked like perfect places to catch one. But it did not happen for either of us.
As time ran out Will and I were working around a rocky point. I told him I would make a couple of casts across the downstream side of the point then we had to go in, even without anything to weigh.
On three casts I landed two keepers and lost one at the boat on a DT 10 crankbait. On my Panoptix I could see baitfish all over the end of the point with fish moving around under them, like in a few other places, but they were feeding better.
I wish I could have made a few more casts but we pulled up at the ramp two minutes before being late!