What a great weekend at West Point Lake in Lagrange, Georgia. A huge crowd of 268 GHSA teams from all around Georgia came to try and qualify for their Championship event on Clarks Hill later this May. As usual for us, it started off with rain and heavy storms and wind on Friday. But once those cleared out, we were left with a beautiful weekend. The lake had been up and down and recent rains had left it with quite a bit of color. Anglers were curious to see if the rains of Friday would help or hurt their efforts on Saturday.
My thought is that it did not hurt one bit. We had a record number of teams catching and weighing fish, with 195 teams bringing at least one fish to the scales. We also had a record weight caught with just under 1500 pounds crossing the scales that afternoon. The big fish were biting as well as the biggest fish weighed in was from Frank Kinnon Pelz and Melvin Jack McKinnon with a big 6-02 Largemouth. There were a half a dozen or so more largemouth in the five pound plus range and then there were some really big spotted bass as well. There were a couple that weighed 3-15 and several more that were right at 3 and three-quarter pounds. West Point Lake is in really good shape right now.
Taking home the top honors was the Trion Bulldog team of Rayne Melton and Cohen Blaschke with an impressive 19-05 limit. They bested the field by almost seven pounds to take home the first-place victory. After that the weights were really, really, really tight all the way through the top 30 teams. Second place belonged to Madison Dougharty and Ty Thompson from Peach County with 12-08 pounds. Charles Byrd and Jake Johns from Coffee High School also had 12-08 pounds. Fourth place belonged to the Loganville team of Jack Streetman and Maverick Nicolai with 12-07 pounds. Jackson Letsch and Finley Edwards finished out the top five with 12-00 pounds.
As the weigh-in progressed, teams relayed that they caught their fish on hooks, lures and secret baits. I guess most of them had another event at West Point coming up real soon and did not want to give away any information. LOL. Some others however said they caught fish on spinnerbaits, crankbaits, Rattletraps and soft plastics. Most anglers reported catching their fish in 5-9 feet of water and many of the teams who weighed in spotted bass said they found their fish in about 15-20 feet of water.
The last GHSA qualifying event will be on April 20th at Lake Hartwell at Tugaloo State Park Ramp. Be sure and remember to register early as the deadline to register is the Monday morning before the event at 8 am Central time.
For full results and more photos please CLICK HERE.
