The third tournament of the season occurred on November 19th on Lake Poinsett. The weather cooperated with light winds and temperatures less than 80 degrees. Water temperatures were in the low 70’s with stained water conditions with two to three feet of visibility in some areas. The St. Johns River system continues to be mostly void of submergent grass where bass love to live and feed. This makes finding bass somewhat challenging for those who do not spend the necessary time to find them. This tournament proved to be challenging for many teams, with only two out of the total thirteen teams catching a full five fish limit. There was plenty of water flow in the various creeks feeding into the river system due to the heavy rains in the days preceding the event. Some areas received 8”-12” of rain which caused water shed areas to drain into the river. Historically, water flows will likely hold forage for bass to feed at some point during the day. Several teams sought these areas early on with mixed results. The key, as always was to find the food that bass like to eat. The bait seemed to be scattered in many areas in abundance, but the bass were difficult to find. In the end, successful teams were able to find there catches in shallower areas by pitching/flipping slowly and methodically in areas with deeper drop-offs. This technique requires patience to break down an area and not fall into the temptation to go too fast. Reportedly, a few teams were able to locate and fish shell beds without significant results. Shell beds in the river system are easy to locate and when the bass are there, fishing can be epic. This event was not the case, at least not by the author and his partner who caught several clams but no bass on the shell beds. No teams reported success by fishing the shell beds. Lake Poinsett is historically a testing ground to challenge your fishing skills. Locating bass is always the key, especially on Lake Poinsett and the accompanying areas all the way down to the dyke near Lake Washington.
Third place went to Mike Watson and Larry Cruce who caught three fish with a total of 8.41 lbs. They utilized speed worms rigged Texas rig as well as other worm patterns. Second place went to Mike Calloway and Mike Morrison who caught five fish with a total weight of 8.91 lbs. They used speed worms and spent considerable time flipping and pitching. First place went to Mike Hampton and Zander Hampton with five fish. Zander was the key member who flipped three bigguns within ½ hour … and he had never flipped before! Great job Zander! Their total weight was 14.3 lbs. They saw success by flipping and pitching as well as using flukes. Big bass went to Dwayne Haga who landed a 4.38 lbs. bass flipping. He caught that big bass just minutes before weigh in next to the ramp. Congratulations to all the winners.
After the tournament, members stayed for a short meeting and a guest from GEICO Insurance gave a short presentation and awarded a $100 gift card to the winning team. Thanks goes to GEICO for their support and sponsorship.
Clark and Mikhal drew the lucky draw for the two StrikeZone $20 gift cards. Thanks goes to StrikeZone for their support and long-time sponsorship.
The turnout for this event was 13 boats, which was 1 less than last month, so we are still a little low in membership. Hopefully more teams will join in for all the great fun and competition that tournament bass fishing provides. The next tournament will be at Lake Kissimmee on December 17th.
SO MANY BASS ……. SO LITTLE TIME
