Last weekend ten members of the Potato Creek Bassmasters fished our August tournament at Lake Guntersville. In two days and 16.5 hours of casting 27 bass longer than the 15 inch minimum size weighing about 60 pounds were weighed in. There was one five-fish limit and three people did not catch a keeper either day.

Ryan Edge had eight keepers weighing 18.89 pounds for first, Raymond English caught nine weighing 18.33 pounds for second, my three weighing 8.04 pounds placed third and my 4.76 pound largemouth was big fish. James Beasley was fourth with three weighing 5.63 pounds.

Guntersville is legendary for its big bass and numbers of them. But as our trip showed, it is less well known that it is the hardest lake in Alabama to catch a keeper in a club tournament. Some people get on the fish and do real good, others struggle.

I went over Thursday afternoon and got a campsite at Guntersville State Park, a great place to stay. The next morning Kwong Yu met me at the ramp to go fishing. He was staying in a cabin with some other club members. We both caught a keeper bass in one of the places we fished before noon.

At 1:00 we went back in a big bay full of hydrilla. When I stopped the boat there was about a foot of water over the grass bed that ran from a foot deep to the bottom in eight feet of water.

I picked up a frog and quickly caught an 18 inch keeper, then cast a big Whopper Flopper topwater plug for a few minutes and caught another one that size. That got me excited, I just knew I could catch fish there during the tournament.

We started there at daylight the next morning and never got a bite. We fished it two more times that day without catching a fish. In fact, with one hour left to fish neither Kwong or I had a keeper bass.

I caught a very skinny 18 inch bass on a jig and pig by a tree on a steep bank for my only keeper of the day. Sunday I got the big one and one other small keeper on a jig and pig out of a grass bed. We never got a fish out of that bay either day.