BIENVENIDO A MIAMI / P-CACK

Had some fun fishing for what I would call smallies x 10 = Peacock bass and Snook.  Lost a lot more than we landed but definitely a great way to mix it up after some rough times out on the lake.  Didn't experiment too much with baits relying on a classic Rebel Pop-R - something with some silver or a green back seemed to be the best bet - and a Rapala X-Rap 6 and 8 (same color rules apply).        

I haven’t had much boat experience fishing for Peacocks while living in Florida – this making really the second time we’ve really put the hammer down and gotten species focused for them - and I was amazed how much the summer patterns we picked up were analogous to smallmouth behavior this time of year.  Bites in the canals were all related to current and transitionary cover (a chunk rock bank to sand for example).  The canal fish were definitely more moody as well, clicking on and off throughout the day and completely shutting down in areas with large water clarity changes.  On the main lake it was like being back up north – every better bite had something to do with offshore structure.  We located a couple rock piles as well as a sunken boat in 7-8’ of water and the rainbow sided bulldogs were there - often times in groups of 2 or 3.  Crazy how smallie-like they behave!

Awesome couple of days took some tweaking to accommodate the masses of 1”-1 1/2” bait swimming around but once we got our presentations ironed out it was on.  We approached everything with 7’ M and MH spinning tackle spooled up with 15-20lbs braid (no leaders) – biggest mod we made (something we should have figured out way earlier) came on the final day  when we bumped up to heavy gauge #4 trebles.  Landing percentages went way up and we didn’t have to baby the fish as much – just let the drag and the rod tip do the work.  Got a bunch of video – most of it heartbreaking but cool all the same!

HD Coming Soon (Change Your setting to 720p)

Never Say Never - Even if it Never Happens

Never Say Never – Even if it Never Happens

Florida offers a diversity of fisheries by anyone’s standards.  The St. Johns to the Florida Everglades, natural lakes to impoundments… they’re all here.  One of the most pertinent aspects of that diversity relates to the largemouth spawn.  The elongated north/south geography of the state, the milder winter temperatures, and the sheer size of the dominant largemouth populations spread across the state make for one of the earliest and longest spawning seasons in the U.S.  That season however is, by definition, an early deal.  Normally beginning in the very southern portion of the state in late fall (October/November), it comes to a gentle dénouement in the north about March.  Rarely – aside from those years with a hard winter season – does one find a wave of bedders, especially on southern water such as the Big O after March…that’s the rule.  As I am continually reminded in other contexts Mother Nature doesn’t follow generic rules, she’s much more apt to dictate by factors – and this year those factors made an interesting exception: an end of April spawning wave.

 Let’s take a look at why it happened - in retrospect everything makes sense!

 

Mild Winter with all the Wrong Fronts

Although the Florida winter of 2011/2012 was fairly mild in comparison to the past few years it seemed to stack up a ton of fronts at all the wrong intervals.  Throughout the winter months I would locate large waves of staging fish moving in from the main lake, however as they would begin to shift into bedding mode a serious front would pass through and reset the process.  One of the keys here is that this situation didn’t just happen once, but rather multiple times from January on.  

The Scattering

Obviously the badly timed fronts didn’t inhibit all the bedding activity.  A mild wave came up in late October early November and scattered fish trickled up through March.  However, in comparison to the huge trans-lake wave FLW anglers found during the 2011 Tour Open, spawning activity during 2012 was far more compartmentalized and spotty.

The Drop

The shad spawn was in full swing through March and intimations of bedding bream were beginning to be seen on and around the grass lines.  Both of these were strong indicators of the post-spawn/pre-summer periods as well as rising water temperatures.  The end of March gave way to a heat wave pushing water temps into the upper 70’s and over 80 degrees following a sunny afternoon; however April flipped the script. 

I left Lake Toho March 31^st with water temps of 83 degrees, two weeks, two fronts, and a handful of cool nights later I arrived at The Lake to find water temps from 69-70 in the a.m. – peaking 73-74 degrees in the afternoon.  The cooler nights held temps in the mid 70’s through the end of April – probably the biggest factor in bringing up the last minute wave of spawners. 

The lack of continual stable weather and thus mass spawning movements on The Lake really paved the way for a nice late surprise.  Stepping back and taking in all the factors really points to a late wave as a strong possibility but it’s tough to have such clarity on the water “at the moment”.  For me this was an echoing reminder to keep general seasonal rules in mind but to be always making decision based upon real time factors and what they point to. 

Stay tuned for some more in depth details on the one-two approach I took towards these fish as well as the various presentations that accounted for 2 near 30lbs days. 

10lbs Giant Lake Okeechobee Bass Flipping

Check out Monster Fishing Tackle and a Giant Lake Okeechobee 
largemouth by following the link at the top of the vid!

Lake Toho BFL 3-28-12 thru 3-31-12

I fished the Gator Division BFL this past weekend up on Lake Toho – ended up pretty shabby in 59^th even though I took 3 days off to pre-fish (3-31-12 BFL Lake Toho Results).  Here’s how things layed out in my eyes.

Shad Spawn

The first 2 days I was able to track down a shad spawn bite that lasted 15-30 minutes after sunrise.  With water temps in the morning ranging from 74-78 degrees, the shad spawn was happening pretty solid.  I found 2 areas that both had the same overall features: a scattered hydrilla edge run up against a Kissimmee grass line adjacent to a hard bottom area (sand/shell).  One area had so much bait that it was tough getting the fish to single out my bait over the real-deal – in that case a Pop-R was key (old school).  The rest of the fish all fell victim to a 1/2oz D&M Custom Baits Spinnerbait in a white/translucent pattern as well as white/chartreuse.  The wind and air temps increased each day and the shad spawn basically disappeared by the day of the tournament – I think due to water temps starting out at 78-79 degrees and winds kicking at 15mph right off the bat in the morning. 

Flipping the Blown in Stuff

I found a couple areas to flip as well.  Nothing too consistent but all the areas boiled down to harder cover (Kissimme grass, Gator grass, bulrushes) with various grasses blown into them (hydrilla, chopped Kissimmee grass, anything floating on top).  Once again, I caught a few fish here and there on this pattern up until the day of the tournament including a 4lbs and a couple 3lbs.  Depending on the thickness of cover I flipped everything from a 3/4oz to a 1 1/2oz paired with beaver baits and smaller craw baits.  I did flip quite a bit of open emergent grass – bulrush clumps and Kissimmee grass – without much luck.

The Irony

I tried to cover a lot of bases during the practice time I had and ended up catching a few cranking scattered hydrilla flats off of Kissimmee grass lines – nothing memorable and no size comparison to the above patterns.  The day of the tournament a front started coming through kicking the wind up more than the past 3 days and my trolling motor took a dump around 11am.  I had already missed a 4-5lbs and lost another of the same size shaking a 1oz Punch Craw in a bulrush head.  To escape the wind a bit we drifted the flats around the powerlines without success and finally about 1ish pushed up to the scattered hydrilla line out from one of my shad spawn areas. 

My coangler started catching fish on a trap and I missed a few on a swimming worm.  Switched to a 1/2oz Red Eye and started burning and ripping and turned a limit around in ~1hr making 3 drift passes on a 200yd stretch.  Key was a section of green good condition hydrilla.

1/2oz. Red Eye Shad from Monster Fishing Tackle

Got a little lucky in end.  A storm blew up ~3pm and we pushed behind an island to use the last bit of time we had in the day and I ended up ripping up a 3lbs on a trap off an isolated hydrilla patch off some old dock pilings.  Ended up with a whopping 10.01lbs but I was awfully close to zeroing for a majority of the day.  For as much as I was aware of the shad population in Toho and its reputation as a trap lake, I really didn’t explore that avenue enough during practice.  Seemingly it’s just another case of looking at what’s right in front of your eyes instead of over thinking things.  It’s too bad too, because I think I could have found a few areas to toss the Alabama Rig I’ve been wanting to bust out in some offshore circumstances = guess she’ll have to wait. 

Tweaking the Alabama Rig

I got trendy and picked up an Alabama rig a couple nights ago after laying in bed trying to figure out how I could apply it to a shallow natural lake like Lake Okeechobee; it probably didn’t hurt that there’s been a shad spawn going on and I’ve been seeing bait busting left and right.  Ironically, this is one of the few bedtime fantasies that I’ve had that’s actually worked out. 

I picked up a generic Alabama rig without jig-heads included – to be honest I don’t even know what brand the thing was (all I remember is that it was the cheapest one I could find ~$14).  Being well equipped to fish swimbaits I have a ton of Owner Twist-Lock hooks laying around.  I took four 5/0 Twist-Lock hooks and mounted them on the corner swivel snaps.

 

I then set it up just as I would rig up a single hook to toss a swimbait in the grass: I threaded on four Gambler EZ Swimmers and buried the hooks.  I decided against skin hooking the baits simply because they would be getting jostled so much during casts that I would end up re-setting them every time not to mention burning thru a lot more plastic than I would like.  The version of the Alabama rig I picked up had a fifth swivel snap in the center  - I popped a gold #5 spinnerbait blade with a barrel swivel on that one figuring the fish would focus on the baits “straggling” on the edges and the blade would add some flash and sound.  

You can see the results in the images.  On 50# Power Pro using a medium retrieve (pretty synonymous with fishing a spinnerbait) the rig runs 6” to a foot below the surface – running Big EZ’s in place of EZ Swimmers would probably get you down around 1 ½  to 2 feet.  Also noteworthy is how clean it came thru the grass.  I worked it around and thru isolated Kissimmee Grass and bulrush clumps without hanging it once – and I definitely wasn’t conservative with where I put it.  

In regards to the night fantasy come to fruition: I fished it in the morning for ~an hour and a half on a main lake flat that usually holds schoolies as well as some bigger fish; had one bite and 2 follows (kind of sounds like musky fishing) – the one bite was 7lbs.  Whether it’s a fluke or not, the rig looked pretty gnarly in the water when you mixed a few twitches in.  It’s definitely a mod to try if you’re stuck in the “shallow water experience” with a decent shad population.