We started this August night tournament at West Point Lake at 5:00 PM. It was very hot and I was soaking wet with sweat at the ramp. A short run to a hump just off the river channel cooled us down some. We threw out a marker on the hump and started casting.
My partner quickly caught a 14 inch spotted bass and put it in the livewell. That fish hit a Carolina rig off the side of the hump in 30 feet of water. I felt one tug on my line but it was gone when I set the hook. We fished the hump for an hour without another bite.
The next stop was some rocky points up the river where I had been told fish were biting. It took us a little more than ten minutes to run up there, and we fished it for about an hour and a half without a keeper although my partner caught a throwback.
At 7:30 or so we took off and ran to the back end of a major creek where I had caught some fish on buzzbaits in years past. After about 45 minutes of casting practice, throwing my buzzbait around bushes and trees in the shallow water, a fish sucked it under. When I set the hook we could tell it was a good one the way it wallowed on top. Since the water was only a foot deep, it could not go down.
I fought the fish to the boat and my partner had the net in the water. I looked at the net to make sure it was ready and lost track of the bass. When I pulled hard to get it to the net, the bass was still near the front of the boat rather than under it as I expected. The fish made a surge, hit my line on the trolling motor and cut the line!
We watched that three pound bass jump three times in 30 minutes trying to throw my favorite buzzbait! By 8:30 it was getting too dark to see so we left the back of the creek without another bite.
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