Night time did prove to be the right time for bass, at least for bigger fish, for a couple of us last Saturday night. Fishing was disappointingly tough at West Point though. Part of the problem was the wind. I have never fished at night with such a strong wind. The wind made it extremely hard to feel your bait and bites after dark.

Eleven members and guests fished the Spalding County Sportsman Club tournament from 5:00 PM to 1:00 AM. We brought 18 keeper bass to the scales weighing about 28 pounds after eight hours of casting. There were three limits but six people didn’t weigh in a fish. Three members left before weigh-in since they had one fish each and did not care about trying to get points.

I won with five at 8.36 pounds, Russell Prevatt had five at 6.51 pounds for second, Billy Roberts was third with five weighing 6.44 pounds and Niles Murray took fourth and big fish with one bass weighing 4.39 pounds.

Al Rosser fished with me and we started on a deep brush pile that I just knew was holding bass, but we never got a hit. After working it and some rock piles we started down a rocky bank at about 7:00 and Al got three small bass, too short to weigh, and I lost one small one.

Then at 7:30 Al got hung near the bank and as I moved the boat to try to get him loose I saw what looked like brush with fish in it about 20 feet off the bank. I turned and cast to it and landed a keeper spot, then threw right back and got my second one while Al was breaking off and retying his line. After 2.5 hours of fishing without a keeper I got two on back to back cast on a jig head worm. That is crazy.

About three hours later Al got hung up again and I cast a Texas rigged worm across a point the wind was blowing on and a two pound largemouth almost jerked the rod out of my hand. I landed it and kept fishing the point but the wind was too strong to really fish it effectively.

We went back to the rock piles to see if bass had moved into them in the dark but the wind was blowing right into them. I switched to a half ounce jig and pig trying to control my bait in the wind but even with it I could not really feel the rocks. We gave up and moved back to the deep brush we started on just as the small front blew through and the moon came up.

At 11:30 I felt a thump on my jig and pig and landed my biggest bass, a 3.32 pounder. After that the wind died some and we wore out the brush without another bite. By 12:15 we decided to try one last place and I got my fifth keeper, a spot bigger than the first two I caught, on the jig and pig.

I thought I might have big fish for the tournament but was shot down when Niles walked up with his bigger bass. Niles said he caught it on a spinner bait on the last cast he had time to make before heading to weigh-in.

So Niles caught the big fish after midnight and my three biggest all came between 10:00 and 1:00, so the bigger fish hit for the two of us late. Billy and Russell said they caught most of their bass before dark.