The ten members and guests of the Flint River Bass Club had a tough day on Lake Sinclair last Sunday. We fished for eight hours on a bright sunny windy day to land 35 bass weighing about 55 pounds. There were three five-bass limits and no one zeroed.

Guest Gary Cronin won with five weighing 10.6 pounds, my five weighing 9.59 pounds was second, Don Gober with three weighing 7.17 pounds was third and his 3.48 pound largemouth was big fish, and Niles Murray came in fourth with five weighing 5.02 pounds. Niles had a good weekend!

I started good, in a way. We blasted off at 6:30 and at 6:45 I landed my first keeper on a Trick worm from a treetop. But it was skinny and just over 12 inches long. That worried me but even more worrisome was I had worked a topwater plug over the tree and ran a spinnerbait through it first. That told me the fish probably would not chase a faster moving bait.

Thirty minutes later I landed a second keeper from another tree top, this one on a jig head worm, my go-to bait on tough days. It was skinny too. I then fished for two hours trying to find more fish and finally caught my third keeper, another light-weight fish, from a dock.

As I worked out of that cove around a rocky point I cast my jig head worm to a rocky seawall near deep water. There was a patch of shade on the water from the pine trees on the bank, and I landed a fairly decent fish weighing about a pound and a half. On my next cast I caught my fifth keeper, another small one, to fill my limit.

After fishing another cove full of docks and catching only a throwback I went back to the point and caught my sixth keeper from the shade. But my best five would not have weighed five pounds total.

For the next three hours I worked docks and points but caught only a few more short fish. With an hour left to fish I had just worked around one of my favorite coves with docks, without a bite, and started to leave, but noticed the bank ahead of me was fairly steep, had seawalls on it and patches of shade. That rang a bell.

My first cast to the first patch of shade produced my biggest fish, a 2.8 pound largemouth. That was better. A few feet further, in the next patch of shade, I caught another one almost that size, then two more just under two pounds each before I ran out of time and had to go to weigh-in.

I surely am glad I found that little pattern!