"Fred's Club Report"
Covering The Panhandle Bass Club
Email fpraby@cox.net

The Panhandle Bass Club held it's fourth annual fishoff at Lake Guntersville, Alabama the first week of October. This is the time everyone concentrates on final point standings for the year and we plan a longer trip utilizing our travel fund to help offset expenses.

Lake Guntersville has a fabulous reputation for big fish in October. It is located in north east Alabama on the Tennessee river system. It is noted for the great frog or rat fishing on the milfoil and hydrilla grass mats that dominate the cover for the lake. Twenty and thirty pound one day stringers are not uncommon so all were excited about the potential to break all club records.

Most of the club arrived on the lake Wednesday in order to be able to prefish all day Thursday before our Friday and Saturday tournament. Many of us were able to get on the lake and locate some fish or at least get an orientation of what direction we wanted to travel. The Holiday Inn our excellent host, arranged for a local guide Doug Campbell, to come in and give us a rundown of the lake and what to expect. Doug covered an array of fish catching hints, where to go, what to throw etc. (he is co-owner of Waterfront Bait and Tackle). There were rumors of several big fish caught on practice day and anticipation was high as we opened the tournament on Friday.

Friday found the wind a little stronger and temperature falling, needless to say fish were a little scarce. Of the 16 fishermen there were 2 limits, 3 'also fished' and 8 of us with a single 15" keeper fish. Wayne Cox had the lead with just over 13 pounds and Rich Cornelius was right on his heels. Walter McCartrney was a close 3rd but no one felt like they were out of it even though the forecast was for the weather to get even worse. With the northeast wind even the big boats found the waters rough when moving from spot to spot. Cliff Armstrong found a new way to enter the 'hammer' award by trying to start his motor without the kill switch attached.

On Saturday we found several other clubs fishing, and they did not respect anyone else on the water, that was disappointing. The topwater bite was not bad early, I managed to boat a couple of shorts and lost a few more that probably would have kept. By noon almost everyone was struggling. I saw Wayne and Lisa, Wayne only had one barely keeper and had sent Lisa over the side to see if she could see any fish underwater. She gave a good show to the traffic on U S 431 as she dried off and changed clothes (she didn't see any fish). A few minutes later I saw them fishing a grass mat behind John Buck and myself. John had found some fish early on topwater and by this time they were out on the edge with a crankbait. The mat was huge, in fact at one time there were 5 boats fishing the same mat all with plenty of room. As weigh in time rolled around we found our guests had several fish. Stump managed to take the Guest Pot with 25.78 pounds and a 6.35 lunker (time for him to go back to Alaska). No limits came in on Saturday, John Buck came in with 3 nice fish, Wayne had 4 but the catch went down from there. Wayne managed to hold on to his lead with a total of 23.33 pounds.
Rich let Stump have the most fish out of their hole.
Rich held on to second with 19.26 pounds and Walter held third with 14.69.

Guntersville is a great fishery and as has been our standard this year we caught the weather all wrong. Everyone had a good time and most would like to go back in hopes of catching it right and putting that record catch together.