Tough Conditions For Eufaula Bass Tournament

Mitchell Grimsley is a 15-year-old sophomore at Towns County High School where he competes on the high school fishing team. Mitchell’s GON Blog centers around his fishing outings and tournament experiences in Georgia.

We fished Lake Eufaula for a tournament on Jan. 19.

With all the recent rainfall, Eufaula was very muddy with a clarity of 3 to 4 inches. The water temperature was around 55 degrees, and the mix of cold and muddy water did not make the day pleasant for us. The wind steadily increased as the day went on, topping out at 20+ mph gust and 16 mph steady wind, according to www.weatherunderground.com. However, some of the north end pockets were not too windy. Though they were wind protected, the northern pockets were not producing fish for us. We fished shoreline grasses and laydowns with big Colorado bladed spinnerbaits, black and blue jigs and shaky heads but could not produce a bite. When we went offshore onto points, we threw spinnerbaits, lipless crankbaits and Carolina rigs. We tried almost everything we knew, but we ended the day with two short fish caught by my partner, Adrian Hooper.

The south end of the lake was very windy with reported 4-foot swells. However, in the end facing the swells won the tournament. Parker Guy and Peyton Dunn from Irwin County won the tournament with 18.18 pounds. They targeted shoreline vegetation and laydowns all below the causeway. This proved to be the story of the tournament.  Many of the top 10 finishers reported that they fished south of the boat ramp, and around or south of the causeway.