Bass fishing today

[caveman]

We went bass fishing again this morning.  I met my buddy/teaching partner at the ramp a little before daylight.  I started with a plastic worm and caught one and missed a couple.  We also fished crankbaits and chatter baits.  The weather is incredibly warm for this time of the year.  I literally had sweat running down my face today while fishing.  The water temperature varied from 68-73 and the fish will likely be bedding within a month.  The fishing was a little slow and we each missed a few.  The biggest missed fish we laid eyes on was 5 1/2-6 lbs.  I brought some home and we'll eat them tomorrow night with my folks.

The last batch I filleted, I kept the backbones, which is something I quit doing when I started using ziplock bags to freeze fish in years ago due to them poking holes in the bags.  Anyway the backbones were what the kids got when I was little.  The ones I had the other day were fit to eat so I kept them today too.

I bread the fish in yellow corn meal with salt, pepper, Lawry's seasoning salt, garlic salt, and a bit of Everglades seasoning and then drop them into boiling peanut oil for a few minutes.  I keep the bag of batter in the fidge or freezer and just add to it what it seems to need.  I fillet a little off of the back of ribs to use as grease testers and to determine if the batter is lacking anything.

We need to go speck (crappie) fishing soon.  My fishing buddy prefers them to bass but I like bass better but will certainly eat either.  Tomorrow morning John and I will saw some cypress logs, maybe some pine and when we are finished we'll work on my old 90 hp Evinrude.  John seems to think the needle in one of the carburetors is not seating properly.  I've replaced the mechanical fuel pump and added an electric one.  I have to cycle the electric pump on to keep the motor fueled and off to keep it from flooding while occasionally pushing the key in to enrich while running.



 

[sawguy21]

That is just plain mean, it is -20C right now. ;D

[JJ]

my other six reels on board had 12 lb test so a a bit on the light side for live shiner fishing

6-8lb is my go to for casting and bait, why >12lb, show picts :0
fish in my avatar landed on 6lb leader.

      -jj

[YellowHammer]

Nice going, Caveman, you've got them dialed in.  I went smallmouth fishing today, 68F and on this lake the water has dropped maybe 20 feet, not sure why.  They say they are putting in a new marina, and need the water low.  Anyway, it's a small lake, only 22 mile long, and I spent the day driving around looking for exposed but normally submerged structure, stuff that I wouldn't normally see. For example, 2 big root balls rolled out in what is normally 15 of water, on the edge of a shelf.  I caught a smallmouth here today, and it's almost dry.  In the background, you can see some cedar tress that were put out out by a dock.  They are high and dry now, but come springtime, they will have fish in them. 



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Here's a place I catch a nice smallmouth but I never could figure out what is was.  With the water so low, I see that what I thought was just a rock bank is some crazy looking lava flow thing.  I will fish this more often for sure.  

[WV Sawmiller]

Robert,

 It is fun to get out in the lake sometimes when it is real low like that just to see what is really there. I'm sure you have a good idea from your depth gauges and such but seeing in in real life is fun and educational. I remember we had warm weather here one time in February and they had dropped the lake level 6-8 feet so we had lots of bare rock banks to watch. Turned out it was mating season for the mink and we spotted and photographed several of them. They run the bank chasing each other but that year we were able to see them. It was neat to see. Normally they are hidden by the trees and roots and such.

[caveman]

I spent the day driving around looking for exposed but normally submerged structure, stuff that I wouldn't normally see

My friend bought a Lowrance graph with the side scan.  He has spent a good deal of time learning to use it and while not as good as seeing a low lake or seeing saltwater inshore spots on full moon low tides it has been very helpful.  I bought a similar Garmin for my center console boat but have not used it enough to be really proficient with it ( my old Furuno bit the dust).  I had written a rather lengthy post to respond to JJ but it got lost somewhere along the way.  Most of the lakes we are fishing are small.  One of our favorites is probably only a few hundred acres.  Another small lake we used to fish put out some monsters.  I never caught any really big ones out of it but the guy I was fishing with today used to guide out of that lake and he's caught two over 12 lbs there.

[caveman]

6-8lb is my go to for casting and bait, why >12lb, show picts :0

We've caught fish weighing several hundreds of pounds on 20lb test line but when fishing heavy structure or thick vegetation, your odds of landing a quality fish go up considerably with heavier line.  Sometimes when fishing live shiners we let them run way up into heavy grass.  Some folks use 50 lb test braid when flipping or fishing live shiners for bass.

When we were kids, JohnM and I went fishing after spending most of the day painting a fence.  He was using 8lb test throwing a huge electric blue worm into open water while I fished the weedline along the shore.  He hooked a monster 28 1/2" bass that quickly located the cattails which were 60' away.  This fish of a lifetime would have surely never been landed if one of us would not have bailed out of the boat and waded chest deep 40' back into the cattails to follow the line down to the fish's mouth.  I'll post a pic of John's bass in the next post.

[caveman]

 

JohnM's 28 1/2" bass.

He let me hold it and bring it back to the boat.  We were younger then.

[customsawyer]

That's a hog right there.

[YellowHammer]

Wow, some people looked a little younger then. :D

I am a bass fishing nerd, and have the most advanced electronics available.  This configuration is typical of a tournament boat, and it lets me see pretty much everything but the pictures look like 1960's black and white tv, grainy and open to interpretation.  Most transducers only image clearly at maybe 5 to 7 mph, and are much like a spotlight at night, you only see what is actually illuminated.  So covering water isn't fast, and even with a small lake like this, it still has 257 miles of shoreline, and takes seasons to map it all.

In contrast, running along shorelines at 60 mph, I can use my own eyes, at full resolution and full color and get a true 3D image of specific structure.  The old adage is 90% of the fish are in 10% of the lake and of that 10%, only 10% holds fish all the time.  These spots are called "Honey Holes" for a reason.  8)

With the lake at record lows water conditions, I have an opportunity to find these and I've already found a few that will pay off for the rest of my life.   

[WV Sawmiller]

Robert,

   My grandfather always called them his "smokehouses" because they were where he went to get his meat. The concept of catch and release would never have made any sense to him. You kept what you caught and if you caught more than you needed you preserved them of late or gave them away. Generally, once you caught what you needed you'd quit and go home.

[Mooseherder]

My son in law this morning on lake Okeechobee with this 8.2 pounder in a club tournament.  He won big fish but came 5th place for the tournament. 

 

[Magicman]

That's a Pig !!!  8)

[Southside]

That is just plain mean, it is -20C right now. ;D

I'll take an ice shack, a propane heater, some smelt lines, a cribbage board, and flags out on the ice over bugs, sweat, and a sunburn any day.  

[caveman]

That's a nice one.  I have never fished in Okeechobee, but it is on my list of places to fish.  Heck, I have not even fished in most of the lakes in my county. 

Jim, the items you write of are completely foreign to me.

[WDH]

Those glaciated Northerners have to do things different.  Even if I caught some ice, I would not know what to do with it.  

[Southside]

Cook it in the air fryer.  Gluten free and low fat.   :D

[Mooseherder]

At the Marina yesterday.
Boating yesterday. - YouTube

[newoodguy78]

You southern guys have your share of good food for sure. A nice batch of fillets caught through the ice is certainly worth the effort of putting on long johns and dealing with some cold fingers. Dang good eating. 

[Mooseherder]

Lake Okeechobee this morning.



 

[caveman]

Here are a few of the bigger fish from my trips this week.  Tomorrow will likely be a challenge with cooler weather, and I suspect, blue skies. 

8.5 lbs.  The angler brought a book to read while her daughter and husband fished.  She never opened the book and after missing several fish, she figured it out and caught five or six good ones. (Saturday).


This young man is from Shanghai, China and was fishing with three friends and their mom.  It too was 8.5, although it does not look that big in the picture.  The resort lodge is in the background.

This one was 8.1 and was caught by a friend of the young man from China on the same trip at a different location.  This was Monday.  I did not take any guests fishing on Tuesday, but I went and caught a few and ruled out some spots.  I hate to waste the guests' time prospecting and would rather them be in the vicinity of fish.

This is a selfie of the first fish I caught on the new rod and reel my daughter and son in law gave me for Christmas during Tuesday's second prospecting trip which was before my afternoon clay shooting trip.

This young man lives in NY, NY and reeled in a 6.5 pounder on a chatter bait this afternoon.  He caught quite a few others from heavy cover on this trip.  I have a five-person afternoon trip tomorrow.  Guiding five at a time on a bass fishing trip is a challenge.  I'll be untangling lines and tying a lot of knots tomorrow.  It surprises me how many folks want to cram a bunch of folks on one boat rather than take two boats, each with a guide.  The cost is the same.

[YellowHammer]

Caveman,
What magic spot are you fishing that has such wads of 8 lb bass?  We catch a few big ones here in Alabama, but that is a high density of whoppers!

That's a phosphate pond, I think, how big is it?  Or is it a series of ponds?  Very impressive!

Mooseherder, those are nice fish too.  I miss my Florida bass fishing!  My grandparents lived across the road, 100 ft from Lake Toho, and I remember some great trips in my youth.  A kids dream lake!

I'm fishing these Tn mountain lakes this winter, because I like fishing sterile, cold, deep, bleak water!  Stupid hard fishing.  This is Tims Ford, sometimes called "the Dead Sea" because it is so difficult, and it's about 15 feet down for winter pool.  Yesterday, I caught smallmouth, largemouth and when I saw what I thought was a big school of smallmouth on the Livescope, I cast this crankbait into them and well, wrong species!  But he choked on that crankbait, he wanted it.  These were the fish I caught, along with a largemouth, while on the phone to Andries in Canada.  So he is good luck when to comes to fishing.  if you are having a tough trip, call him up, and you will start catching fish!

[caveman]

There are three phosphate pits that are connected at the resort.  Those are the ones we fish.  There are other pits on property that have even more fish.  We are trying to convince the higher ups to offer VIP trips to those with higher prices. 

I would guess the smallest pit we fish is less than 10 acres and the one the hotel is on is probably 30 acres and the one to the west is larger, possibly 140 or so acres.  You can look at them on Google Earth.  The resort is Streamsong Golf Resort in Bowling Green, Fl.  https://earth.google.com/web/@27.6914503,-81.93295854,38.54781122a,5737.93290359d,35y,359.2242431h,0t,0r/data=CgRCAggBOgMKATBCAggASg0I____________ARAA 

I've been guiding here since September (took most of October off for FFA trip and Hurricane repair/clean up) and did not have any 8 lbs. over the rail until Saturday.  We have caught several 5,6 and an occasional 7 lber previously.  Several big fish have been missed, usually a couple a week.  Most of the folks we take fishing are golfers who like to fish. 

It is not uncommon to have someone on the boat beginning the cast with one hand and ending with the other and then retrieving the bait with the spinning reel upside down and reeling backwards.  Baitcasters are available upon request.  I took a Shimano Calcutta out of an annoying guest's hands a couple of weeks ago after I asked him not to cast it.  It belonged to a friend, and I brought it to cast very large shiners on 5/0 hooks.  He was casting with the bait click on and had already dropped a Penn Battle reel on a St. Croix rod into the drink (I've been trying to snag that outfit between trips on some days). 

The resort puts the folks who catch bass over 8 lbs in the Streamsong Bass Hall of Fame.  My goals are for the guests to catch fish on every trip, then catch lots of fish, then we start looking for bigger fish.  They are still pre-spawn, but some are likely getting close.  The big females are moving in where the bucks have been numerous.

I've never fished for or caught smallmouth but I hear they put up a good fight.  I'll probably wish I had Andries' number the next couple of days as our weather is going to be cold and probably have high, blue skies.  I'd be like a fish out of water fishing your mountain lakes.  We've been getting ours out of or near heavy vegetation (Brazilian Pepper bushes, torpedo grass and Lili pads).  We've had to leave some spots due to fearless gators.  I smacked a 9-footer today with a landing net that followed my guest's bait all the way to the boat.

[caveman]

I took a family this afternoon from Wisconsin on a two-hour trip.  The wind was mostly from the west to northwest, which really limits where one can fish in these pits.  I have the rods rigged on my boat with Khale hooks, orange corks and stiff rods for those who can set a hook.  I also have rods rigged with circle hooks, yellow corks and softer tipped rods for those who like to feel it and reel it.

Thankfully, the folks today wanted to set the hook.  The mom, Kate, ended up catching more fish than her husband and son.  The conditions were not ideal, with a high, blue sky and cold weather.  They caught 9-10 bass in a two-hour trip that I extended to 2:45.  I would have gone longer, but the mosquitoes were swarming, and they were ready to go.

The college aged son managed to catch an osprey by the wing after the osprey tried to steal his shiner.  I've unhooked pelicans, sea gulls, water turkeys (cormorants), egrets, and probably several other fish-eating birds, but the osprey was the most challenging.  They did not catch any big fish; three pounds was about the best today.  

Yellowhammer could probably out fish me in these pits within a day in his boat.  I do not have a working depth finder/graph or any electronic equipment.  This has been a busy week, 70 + hours and it is two-hour round trip from home (so much for retirement).

Tomorrow we will saw and Sunday I'll be back down there trying to help folks catch fish.  The weather for the next week or so will be offering challenges to fishing.

[YellowHammer]

I doubt I could outfish you at all, you have those pits dialed in!  

How do you untangle an osprey without getting whacked?  I've untangled most of the toothless and talonless birds,  even the big Velociraptor looking birds, they can get pretty mean, but not an osprey with both a meat cutting beak and talons.  

I remember one day I was fishing, standing on a jetty and a seagull got wing tangled and then hooked in my line, just as a great big tourist attraction boat motored by, maybe 50 people on board.  As soon as I reeled in the squawking bird it, I could hear over the tourist boat loudspeakers announcing "Look, he's hooked a poor bird, let's watch."  Uh Oh. The pressures on, I guaranteed I was now being filmed and figure if I didn't do everything right, I was going to jail for a felony "harming a cute bird" charge or something.  So I proceeded to untangle and unhook the little screaming demon while everyone watched with cellphones out, because the durn boat had actually pulled up to watch!  Jeeeze!  Anyway, he flew away fine and folks on the boat clapped.  That was definitely my most pressure filled bird release!