In the March Potato Creek bassmasters tournament at Eufaula, 23 fishermen cast for 16.5 hours to land 107 bass weighing about 211 pounds. Most of us caught fish but not as many as hoped. The cold, muddy water made fishing tough.

Tom Tanner won with nine bass weighing 22.60 pounds and had big fish with a 4.53 pound largemouth. Trent Grainger was second with nine at 22.23 pounds,
Lee Hancock was third with ten weighing 19.15 pounds and Mitchell Cardell placed fourth with nine at 18.36 pounds.

I knew I was in trouble when a couple of local fishermen told me most tournaments were being won on deeper ledges fishing big crankbaits. I am worse at that method than any other. And they were catching them near the dam, a 30-mile run by water from Lakepoint. With the wind and cold I knew that was not something I would do.

On Thursday I caught a couple of fish on spinnerbaits while checking out some creeks closer to our launch. Friday, I went out for just a couple of hours, mainly marking a GPS trail to follow to where I wanted to fish during the tournament.

We started well before daylight, trying to beat all the other tournaments. Lakepoint has two launch areas, one with six ramps and a parking lot that can handle about 150 vehicles with trailers, but there was a big high school tournament using it. We put in at the smaller launch, with a ramp barely wide enough for two trailers at a time and parking for about 50 rigs.

It was crowded, too. When we came in there were 35 boats sitting out from the ramp waiting to take out. There was a big tournament using it, too.

I did not want to run far in the dark so I started on the riprap and landed a small keeper spot at 7:50. After trying a bunch of other things I went to a creek and, as I idled across a point going into a cove, I saw fish on it, but could not get them to bite.

I did catch a three-pound largemouth in the cove on a spinnerbait, but that was it for me for the day, two fish.

Sunday, I went to that creek and caught three keeper largemouth on a jig and pig before 10:00, then tried the point. The fish hit, I landed four keepers on my first four casts and for almost an hour caught fish every time I got to the GPS waypoint and made the right cast from it. I landed 14 bass in that hour, so I had a limit. I really needed three of them the day before!