Fishing for Headaches

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!

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.