Last Sunday nine members of the Flint River Bass Club fished our November tournament at Lake Lanier. I think the rain scared off many of the members but it was weird. It was raining hard at my house at 3:30 AM when I was hooking up the boat and I had my windshield wipers on high all the way to I-85. Then it quit raining.

Everything was wet and misty, but during the tournament I never put my hood up on my rainsuit. Then on the way home I had to turn on my windshield wipers on high about the time I got off I-285 and on I-675 headed back. I am glad it held off while we fished.

In the tournament the nine of us cast for eight hours to land 12 keeper 14-inch bass weighing about 28 pounds. There was one five-fish limit and three fishermen didn’t have a keeper. There was only one largemouth – the other 11 were spots.

We did catch some good spots. Five of them weighed over three pounds each, and the biggest one weighed 4.79 pounds. That is a big spot. Spots fight harder than largemouth and are fun to catch.

I managed to land a limit and won with 8.87 pounds, Sam Smith had three weighing 5.56 pounds for second, Chuck Croft had big fish and third place with his 4.79 pounder and Don Gober was fourth with one at 3.77 pounds.

I started fishing a spinnerbait on a rocky point at 6:30 and landed my biggest keeper, a spot just over three pounds, on my second cast. At 8:00 I landed my second biggest fish on a jig head worm on another rocky point, then got my third keeper on the next rocky point I fished with the jig head worm at 8:30.

Catching three keepers in the first two hours made me feel pretty good, but I did not hook another fish until 2:00 when a keeper largemouth hit my jig head worm back in a pocket around some brush. With 15 minutes left to fish I ran to a rocky point near the ramp and, when I looked at my watch and saw it was 2:25 and I had to be at the ramp before 2:30, said to the fish and myself, ‘Ok, this is my last cast.”

As the jig head worm sank I saw my line jump and set the hook on a 14 inch spot, filling my limit. That is why I never give up and never go in early. You just don’t know which cast will result in a fish.

Fishing was tough for us at Lanier but folks that fish it a lot and know it are doing well. On Saturday it took five spots weighing over 17 pounds to win a tournament there and many teams in that tournament had five fish weighing over 12 pounds. And fishing there and on other area lakes will get better and better until Christmas if the weather this year is like it usually is here.