warmer

oh foshizzle

I'm assuming "every other record in their book" does not include the trophy for the most humble angler : x2

sounds like fun gobbledog!

somebody start a poll... which is which on the good/bad scale?

i am truly sorry your daughter is sick, but my friend... you will when the spelling bee when they ask you to spell "sour grapes"

you know who ike is, i know who ike is sponsors know who ike is... IKE WINS! he is very soft spoken and mild mannered in person, so i'd say its part of the show for attention, and once again - IKE WINS!

siding w/ steve p's conclusion but not his tone here. i think ca is proof that stocking w/ trout + importing florida strain lmb = giant fish. sure deep water is important, but we have plenty of lakes w/ that kind of depth. we need big slow food w/ high fat content if we want monsters. gizzard shad are about the best option we have, but they require active bass to catch them, and active bass are not chunky bass. next state record will come into the boat on the end of my line. and my favorite florida lakes are: 1. kissimmee 2. toho 3. anything-that-is-not harris chain

the coolest kid at the weigh in? thats right, my kid http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/tournaments/elite/photogallery?id=3296967&photo=4

go bobby lane

wish i could say that

commercial = show sponsor they all come w/ strings... certain baits they cant suggest, certain boats they cant run, and on and on... you cant get away from the bent of the "sponsor" dollar in any form... sit back and enjoy the show.

there would be no fishing on tv without sponsors.

lee, was i really that bad a parter

teneroc, saddle creek, peterson park, and carter road are all public access phosphate pits in lakeland. used to be that you could join fin and feather club and fish all the private ones they had access too, but there was some hullabaloo about mosaic or somebody discontinuing the agreement, so i dont know the status of that. other than that, you just have to find somebody who lives on one and get access through them... e.g. eagle brooke subdivision, grasslands, oakbridge, a new one out by the airport, and on and on.... they all hold big fish, but some are better than others.

how bout those lane boys! lakeland, fl represent! fo sho and all that sort of thing. oh, and yes, 12" and the limit of one over 22" exemptions are given at many tournaments in fl, and certainly the major ones.

thanks! in leu of a power pole i went with a drift sock and casted w/ the wind still i almost got knocked out of the boat w/ a few of those wind gusts. people caught fish in all sorts of ways... i think they were really eating well, it was just hard to find a place where you could actually fish that there werent tons of people already (i saw boat after boat checking the canals in the brahma island area). some caught them cranking in hatch for good weight. some casting weightless senkos - how do you tell if you get a bite in that wind? winner caught them blind casting beds in toho, so go figure.

march 8th, kissimmee: was it windy saturday? i fished the bfl on kissimmee saturday, finally cashed a check. ended in 6th of a field of 131 and caught 14lbs 5ozs. all of them on a toad in 3/4 ft w/ mixed veg. one of the bites i caught after my rod snapped in half just above the reel. hand over handed to where he was pinned to a pad. id rather be lucky than good any day. sunday, 12lbs 5ozs and a 3rd place in the extreme tourny. couldnt make them eat the toad, caught fish on the spinnerbait in pads. one 6lber and 4 dinks (3 of which we caught w/ 20 minutes to go). my bigger fish are out a little deeper than they were.

my pre-fishing this time of year is weather directed. is it stable, ill just go sometime during the week. if it is volatile i will a) go the day before or try to match conditions a week or so before as closely as possible. as far as fishing or scouting, i think you can learn a lot from maps, but in my opinion, the concentrations of fish i find in florida's shallow heavy veg lakes often make very little sense. so i scout a little and fish a lot.

good report. sounds like that flw mixture is north cove.

here is one of those deep bite arrietta bass i was telling you about.

thanks all for the responses. i suspect based on the flw kissimmee, that everyone has similar trouble - although it looks like hite hit it with the reaction bait approach. steve p, when you say mats what do you mean... i suspect you mean get near the fish you had located and find the thickest most clogged up mess you can find and punch it w/ a fat weight. e.g. in pads, find the uprooted clumps that bind to floating islands and gator vine, etc. in hydrilla, find the chocked out topped out stuff. in k grass find the sticks gator vine... and on... i have not really had the patience in the past to punch mats, i could use a day of success doing this... something tells me ill have to wait for summer for a good day of that.

it is unusually clear, and there is a lot of boat traffic from water sport folks. lee, any size on those toad fish?

feb 26th kissimmee, east wall 8am to noon, high wind out of nw i stayed on the east shore and fought the wind sight fishing w/ clouds and wind, mostly to see if i could pull it off... i can say with a great deal of confidence that i can see that a power pole would make quite a difference. i spooked most of them, but managed to catch three good fish in the 4-5lb class... other than that, just a few little bucks. the 3 i caught were aggressive, i didnt have to work on them at all, just pitched a 10 inch worm. a retro update: arrietta (standard dishpan sandy bottom central florida lake to 25 ft deep, no shorline veg w/ the falling water) saturday the 23rd my wife woke and announced that she had the morning off, so i loaded the boat w/ the four kids and put on the water around 11am. the wind was howling and i had been shallow recently enough to know there were only little ones, and even if they werent the water is so clear you spook them a mile off... so i went deep. 1 off of an old brush pile, one off of a ledge w/ muscle bar, then drifted w/ the wind and found a nice brush pile in 15ft... anchored and caught 12 in 15 casts... 5 above 4lbs and one at 7lbs (my 6 year old reeled the bigger ones in, the others took turns w/ the little ones.) about 1:15pm the rain turned from sprinkle to downpour and a chorus of crying and blue lips under the patio umbrella convinced me to head back in... oops forgot to close the sunroof and the windows on the car... cranked the heater, bought a few slurpies, ran them a warm bath and all was well. in fact, my wife reported that when the one year old woke from her name she said, "shishy" thats my girl. all the fish off that pile were female, i see beds in the lake up to 9 ft deep... im sure these were prespawn, but does anyone know how deep they will bed?

everyone knows that the post front florida bass are tough to catch, but i was just wondering if any of you folks have ever felt like you really had them dialed in post front. im looking for a little of the why as much as the how. as for me, my best success has been fishing tight to cover slowly, but that seems to require a HIGH degree of confidence that the cover im fishing is where they are.

i hear good things about the offshore bite, on grass.