Last Sunday 27 members of the Potato Creek Bass Club fished our April tournament at Lake Lanier. We landed 84 14-inch keeper bass weighing about 174 pounds. There were nine five-fish limits, and one person did not weigh in a bass.
Jamie Beasley won with five weighing 13.16 pounds, Sam Smith was second with five weighing 12.93 pounds, third went to Jeff Wright with five weighing 12.75 pounds and Edward Folker was fourth with five weighing 12.57 pounds. David Martin had a largemouth weighing 4.74 pounds for big fish. Most of the fish weighed in were spotted bass.
I went up on Tuesday and camped at Don Carter State Park. Don Carter is our newest state park and it had very nice facilities. The campground is spacious and there are great bath houses but there are also hiking trails, horse riding trails, a beach and cabins.
I put in at the park way up the river on Wednesday and fished the stained water in small coves. The water was stained and in the low 60, a perfect combination for the way I like to fish this time of year, but after five hours I landed four keeper bass.
I did catch two nice largemouth on a buzzbait, one about 2.5 pounds and one close to four pounds, but both hit later in the afternoon. I did not think it was worth the 20 mile boat ride up there from our tournament launch site.
Several folks told me there was a good bite on the lower lake fishing Flukes around boat docks, so Thursday I put in at Balus Creek, our tournament launch site, and tried that pattern for several hours without a bite. The back end of Balus Creek was stained and there were shad everywhere but I could not get a bite there, either.
I did finally catch a four-pound largemouth from a dock in the back of a creek, on a Carolina rig of all things, but that was no pattern. One bite does not tell me much, even though it was a good one.
On Friday I tried different things and final caught one keeper spot from a brush pile on a Fluke. I had no idea what to do in the tournament, so I decided to fish memories.
The first rocky point I want to fish Saturday morning had a boat fishing it so I tried other things. At 11:00 I had not caught a fish so I went back to the first point and caught two keepers and two short fish and lost another keeper, all in 20 minutes.
By 2:00 I had not had another bite, including fishing all the docks where the big hit on Thursday. I stopped on another rocky point on the way in to the ramp and caught two more keepers the last hour. All four hit a Carolina rig but four weighing five pound was good for about 20th place!
Maybe I should have made that run up the river.