Bright skies and moderate winds awaited the Southern Tier Bassmasters for their second points tournament of the year. As could be expected, Keuka gave up a great number of good sized bass. The tournament average pounds per fish was, in fact, a new club record for average points tournament fish at 2.21 pounds. Helping this average was Ron Hill's bass weighing 5.78 pounds. This fish was the largest weighed in at the Keuka tournament and earned Hill lunker honors.

Keuka smiled on Bill McKelvey Sr. on the Saturday of the tournament. A quick limit in the first half hour allowed for the winning weight to be amassed over the eight hours of the tournament. With a weight of 16.11 pounds McKelvey outdistanced the competition by over 1 pound. Admittedly, the bite had died off between 11:00 and 1:00, but the times that it was on made up for the lull.

McKelvey, who is sponsored by Janison Marine, divulged that his presentation was "very slow." He was able to coax the fish into hitting a modified power bait. Although the color of the bait did change six times during the day, the primary bait had extra weight and gold specks added to it. With these modifications, McKelvey found the combination of variables that the big fish in his area were looking for.

McKelvey stated that "lot of time was put into finding my spot." It was time well spent as his limit could have been even more impressive if it weren't for missing "at least four fish that were about into the five pound class." The pattern centralized around deep weed beds in ten to twelve feet of water. McKelvey wanted to add, "This being my first win, I would like to thank all the club members of Southern Tier that have helped [me] in the past."

In second place was Dominic DiGirolamo with a weight of 14.67 pounds. With a big fish just under five pounds, DiGirolamo’s bag assured a strong finish. This was his third tournament on Keuka and he had prefished the lake for three days prior to the tournament and also a few weeks earlier. While he didn't have much going during the days he spent practicing, Dom went out and just went fishing.

"I found that the wind was coming out of the West, so I tried to fish the inside weeds on the East side of the lake," related DiGirolamo. His guess that the baitfish on the windy shoreline would produce fish was correct, but it produced the wrong type of fish. After catching a few Northerns on a Lucky Craft chartreuse shad Pointer 100, Dom decided to move out to the outside weed edge. This move led to two fish in the 3 pound range being caught on the Pointer. When this bite died down it was about two hours before DiGirolamo moved to a new area.

A bit further South, DiGirolamo started flipping 5" Senkos under docks. Using this technique he caught a 3+ pound largemouth and his best fish, a 4.90 pound largemouth. The docks were all "in 3' - 6' of water with quick access to deep water." It was not until 1:00 that DiGirolamo caught his final fish, a bass just over a pound. The only regret that DiGirolamo had was that he had a problem managing his time at the end of the tournament. With only a few minutes to go, he passed over one spot that he figured he could get a better fish off of. When he reached the launch 10- 15 minutes early, DiGirolamo realized his mistake. "I actually could have fished this small area for the larger fish that may have won the tourney for me."

The Second Points Tournament of the 2002 season was a great success and Southern Tier Bassmasters would like to thank their sponsors for their support.

- John Siejak