On Saturday at West Point I started riding around looking for fish at about
noon. At 2:30 I rode over a hump right off the mouth of a creek channel and saw
shad and fish under them, down 24 feet deep. Threw out my marker and dropped a
spoon down, and got a thump. When I landed the largemouth it weighed 5 lbs. 12
ozs on my digital scales!

Let it go, pulled in my marker and left. Didn't find anything the rest of the
day, and at a team tournament weigh-in at 4 PM only about half the teams had a
bass. Took 5 weighing 10-15 to win and there was a 6-5 for big fish, and two
more over 5 brought in.

The day was mostly sunny with some breeze and fairly warm. Water temp right at
50. That night as I ate supper it started raining, and rained all night.
Sleeping in the van I heard it good. Raining the next morning as we put in for
our tournament - 19 guys showed up despite the rain.

I went straight to the place I had caught the 5 pounder the day before and saw
the shad and fish under them were still there. I dropped a marker and started
fishing. Three hours later me and my partner decided to try something else -
not a bite!

I hooked a solid 3 pound bass on a Bandit crankbait on some rocks, but when it
came to the top the plug pulled out. It lay there on the surface for a second,
almost like waving goodbye!

We kept going back to the hump and jigging, hoping the fish I could plainly see
would start biting. We did that off and on all day. At 2:55 we arrived back to
spend the last 30 minutes of the tournament there, and I caught a 1.89 pound
spot at 3:00. That was it, although my partner thought he had one thump his
spoon at 3:15.

At the weigh-in one guy had two weighing 3.5 pounds together for first. 9 of us
had one keeper, mine placed 4th. There were 10 zeros! It was still raining and
getting colder when we left.

The worst thing that happened was what the Corps of Idiots are doing. Since a
lot of trash washed into the lake during a flood last summer, they brought in
bulldoziers and track hoes and are cleaning up every stick of wood in some
areas. One bank with blowdowns and stumps that I have caught fish on for over
20 years is clean as a baby's bottom right now. It lookes like a plowed field,
not a stump or stick of wood on it. They piled it up and burned it!

I called Monday and the guy at the Corps office said they were removing the
wood so skiers and skidoo riders would hot hit it this summer. The lake is 8
feet low, so everything from the high water mark out to 8 feet deep is gone. I
asked if fishermen were considered and he did not have much of an answer,
saying one guide on the lake supported what they were doing, as did the West
Point Coalition, a group that tried to improve the lake. I will try to call
some of them this week to see why they suppport it since they are trying to put
more cover into the lake.

Ronnie

http://fishing.about.com