hawgenvy

Anytime I've gotten a new bait casting reel that I've spooled up with FC I have ridiculous backlash problems initially for sometimes an hour or more and it takes a bunch of patience to fine tune the reel (brakes vs. spool tension) -- and half the time I think either I've bought a crappy reel or that I'm a total klutz (I actually am a klutz but not a total one), and I contemplate at that point tossing the reel or else myself weighted down into the deepest portion of the lake. But eventually and seemingly magically all of a sudden I get it dialed in perfectly and it no longer backlashes and can be thrown really far. Fluorocarb does seem to need a little more brake than spool tension. Anyway, then the reel works well forever until I try to screw around with it because I need extra distance or am casting into a headwind or something, so if I touch the controls again I'm always sorry and I feel like an idiot again. I tell ya, ks, you'll figure it out and it'll be worth it because there is nothing better than fluoro for light finessy things that you want to sink, like weightless senkos or flukes. And the stuff is sensitive, invisible, tough, etc. I use Seaguar offerings, usu #12 Red Label or AbrazX for the above weightless morsels, but I haven't really tried many others. If I can cast fluoro I know you can. Good luck. Oh, BTW, for fluoro I personally recommend tying on the hook with the San Diego jam knot. Palomar is a close second. Those old clinch knots will slip or break with fluocarb. I really love the SDJ knot, even though I've never been to San Diego. If you don't know the SDJ, there are a billion you tubes on it. It's real easy. But don't do the ridiculous double jam -- the single one is perfect. Great with braid, too.

There are bass in every body of water in west Boca except the swimming pools. Try canals and residential ponds, or any golf course ponds if they permit you. This time of year the bassing can be very slow unless you find honey holes way out in the glades, via boat or a guide. But along the boca banks in the steamy months I've done best on weightless Zoom flukes, other small soft swimbaits, t-rigged worms, and weightless senkos. Zoom Salty Super Flukes seem to work best for me from July thru much of October, on 8 to 12 lb fluro line and with a 3-0 or 4-0 offset hook. Use jerk, jerk, pause, or else move the fluke slowly, subtly, super finesse-like around grass or other light structure. Target emergent or shoreline green stuff or any big pipe. There's always a bass hiding by the end of a pipe. Or 'walk the dog' with a fluke along the surface and pause here and there. They'll often inhale it on the pause. I use natural colors, browns and greens and sometimes shad shades. Make sure you rig it straight. There are lots of You Tube vids on that. Wash mosquito repellent off your hands with soap and water before you touch anything. The action will pick up a lot once the weather starts to cool. Then you can throw larger swimbaits, frogs, jigs, swimjigs, crankbaits, buzzbaits, jerkbaits, etc. My personal light summer fluke fishing rigs are the Dobyns Champion 682 rod with a Lews Speed Spool baitcaster spooled with 12 lb fluoro; and a BPS CabonLite 6-6 medium spinning rod, set up with a small Penn Fierce 2000 spinning reel with #14 braid and a fluoro leader tied below a little swivel. You'll need heavier stuff around cover, of course. But these set ups are very effective and are good value to bank fish around clean residential pods in your area. Note that this is just the opinion of an amateur. Good luck.

Hey, GoRaven, I use 4/0 weighted swimbait hooks on the 4.8" fat swing Keitech and hooking up fine most the time. To change the subject, lately I've been using Yum Dinger senkos, and even though the bassin's been slow around here for some two weeks, for some inscrutable reason my senkos have been disappearing! Could only find a few half chewed ones at the bottom of my 5-gallon, and after I fished with them torn senkos from the other end on the lake Wednesday night, they became fully chewed or gone, courtesy of some fat little one to two pounders. So I had to order a bunch of Dingers on TW and fortunately they were on sale for under $3 (for the 5"). But of course I ordered a spit load of 'em because I hate, I say, I hate paying the shipping cost. Well, now I'm out $51, and she don't know it yet. She'll be a little mad cause I had recently told her I don't need nothing for a while since they not biting anyway. But what was I supposed to do? I tell you this: lest she kills me dead I'm gonna be very happy sittin on a whole fresh bunch of brand new stick worms all got on sale. Yessir.

I wish there were some sort of membership option that would include free shipping. TW, are you there?

And I usually toss in another $5 for the two day shipping. Between the free shipping angle, competitive pricing, and the tremendous choice of products, those TW people sure know how to reel in us anglers.

Does anyone find it nearly impossible to spend less than $50 from TW? Like when all you really need is to replenish a bag or two of soft plastics (whose production cost is probably a nickel), you end up buying stuff you don't need, but hope you will need within a few months, so that you can save the high shipping fee. Then a week later there is one other thing you forgot to order, because right now that thing is actually catching fish and you're soon to run out of it. Or it's something new you've been really wanting to try, but you neglected to order it. And the shipping cost for that one item is more than the price of the item itself. So you again buy maybe $54 of stuff, to get free shipping. This recurring process seems to build quite a nice bit of inventory in the garage.

One of these days.

Bad @ss pads that hold bad @ss bass.

I'm looking forward to an agressive POST spawn bite in the next few weeks!

If you see it again, collect some in a jar and see if you can get someone in a lab to put it on a slide and look at it under a micrscope. Perhaps at a university biology dept or a goverment agency, or if you know a doctor or lab worker. Algae, diatoms, and suspended silt should each look very different. BTW, if you've ever looked at a random sample of water from a pond (microscopically) it's pretty amazing, especially if you collect water ajacent to some weeds. Water fleas, cyclops, hydrae and all kinds of bizare creatures -- stuff at the bottom of the food chain that bass fry eat so they can eventually grow big and fat.

Nice going! Glad you had a good day! It is pretty terrific that your son could enjoy being on a boat that long. Any one of my three kids around that age would have lasted only about twenty minutes. I've been having bad bass luck over the past two weeks. I don't know if it's me or the fish. Maybe their appetites are off due to spawning, and maybe there is a high percentage of them on beds right now. This evening I pulled in only three fish over 2 pounds in three hours. The last of them, a three pounder caught on a black buzz bait at 8 pm, had a shaky head jig down in his gut -- the same shaky head my friend had lost on a fish, obviously the same fish, an hour earlier! Imagine inhaling a huge buzz bait while you have a big hook stuck down your throat. I probably saved his life by catching him and getting that jig out -- maybe that was his plan. Have a great week. Happy bassing.

Salt increases the density of the plastic so it sinks faster, and it's easier to cast because it is heavier. Also, supposedly, salt makes the plastic tastier so the fish doesn't spit it out as fast, giving you an extra second for the hook set. If you want a bait to float, say on a dropshot rig, don't use a salty bait. If you're not sure if a bait has salt, give it a little bite yourself and you'll taste it. Some plastics start out salty and as you fish the salt slowly dissolves away. You'll then notice it becomes harder to throw or starts to float -- time to put on a fresh bait.

I fully agree with Catch and Grease. Everything depends on how crowded are the pads. If sparse enough, almost any good bait/line/rod can achieve success. But when the pad leaf surface coverage approaches 40 or 50 percent it becomes difficult to pull a subsurface bait horizontally, because your line will overlie some intervening pads, and so as you reel, that line will tend to elevate your bait to the surface to snag a leaf, usually where it joins its stem. And furthermore, in bad pad cover, any hooked bass worth its salt will find a deep stem to wrap around in a half second, which is about how long you've got to pull his nose to the air, and you've got to keep it there -- or you'll quickly find yourself battling a bouquet of lilies rather than a fat fish.

This is what I do in heavy pads: I'll pitch a tungsten weighted T-rigged creature like a brush hog or otter thing or lizard into any little hole between pads, let it sink down to the bottom, pause, shake it once or twice, and if no bite I pull it straight out and and pitch it into the next opening. Keep going until you nail something big and mean. Use heavy braid (50 lb or 65) and a flipping rod; and when you're bit, pull the fish up and out as fast as you can or you'll lose her in the lily stems. An advantage of the pads is the fish can't see you as easily so you can usually get close enough to flip the pads like this. Also, burn a Horny Toad or a slick swimbait like EZ Swimmer across the pads, but let the bait drop for a few seconds into some holes between pads. Some of the tube scents like Mega Strike seem to lube the baits so they slide better across the pads. Again, use heavy equipment and pull out the fish fast and hard -- those pad stems are tough. I'm no expert, but have fished a lot of close pads and have had some success with the above. Good luck.

It's the same here in SoFlo. I've managed to get permission, from knowing certain residents, to bank fish a few courses -- generally after all the golfers have finished. It's easier to do now, once DST has kicked in, for every eve at 6:00, after golfing all day, those golfers are required to be home to shower and get ready to go out to dinner with the spouse and maybe another couple or two. Even with having been granted permission to fish the ponds, my strategy is to keep a low profile, and I try to stay out of sight. All it takes is one guy to complain and my privileges are gone. And here in Boca Raton, which is loaded with wealthy retirees, there seem to be plenty of people who find it very difficult not to voice a vigorous complaint when the opportunity arises.

You will. This Spring! And thanks!

Thanks a lot, guys!

Caught this 7.6 lb monster this evening just after sunset. From the bank, in heavy pads, on a SK Baby Rodent. Struck only 10 feet from where I stood, muscled her almost straight up vertically out of the weeds, and she splashed water all over the place. I've been bassing consistently for only about a year, and this is I think the third largest LMB I've ever nailed, so I feel compelled to share my glory! Glad my friend Larry was there to snap the photo on my phone.

That for me is the beauty of bass fishing, an hour of tossing a bait in a local pond or canal after work and maybe you've got a couple of nice ones, and then you're done, and not covered with salt or sand. And you've tossed 'em back so no fish to clean. Most of my friends and neighbors don't get it at all. They probably think I sit in a folding chair and catch bony little bream for dinner. Someone asked me yesterday if I read a book while I'm fishing. I told her how bass fishing is all action, thrill of the hunt and so forth, advanced art and science, advanced techniques, always learning new strategies. She thought I was being sarcastic.

Thanks SirSnook. I've also been concerned about the lack of vegetation compared to a year ago in several locations in the Boca/Delray/Boynton area. Seems there are less shoreline emergent plants, and less pads as well, in residential and golf course locales. I always have better luck catching bass in the ponds with more abundant pads. I was not sure whether the diminution of the pads and shore plants was a result of some natural climatic phenomenon (we have had a number of cold fronts) or a deliberate action by the communities, possibly a byproduct of indiscriminate algae-reducing herbicidal chemicals. Communities of course care about the appearance of their waters, but I think to them the aesthetic of a sterile appearing plant-less lake is preferable to one with the slightest hint of scum. Although emergents like pickerel weed and reeds and pads are also found attractive, algae is an eyesore and can accelerate eutrophication, and it is probably much cheaper to get rid of everything than to clear the algae while leaving the good stuff. I think some of the richer communities try to keep some pads, etc, and many of the others don't. A thriving healthy ecosystem with big chunky happy bass is probably almost never a goal for residents and golfers in south Florida. Anyway, there are probably governmental rules and standards, and communities apparently have a lot of latitude. I would love to learn more about the whole subject but haven't found good information sources. So if you or anyone can link me to some information about SoFlo pond management science and practices I'd appreciate that.

Keep in mind that the spawn period is much longer the further south you go. In the tropics and south Florida, the bass spawn can last for several months. In the far north it could last only three weeks. Seasonal climatic changes (temp and day length) and seasonal biological changes (cyclic features of other related flora and fauna -- like insect hatches or the blue gill spawns) occur more abruptly the further north you go. Here in So Florida, summer seems to last practically all year and winter water temps can be in the 70s. And lots of water is shallow in SoFlo. The day length changes are less dramatic too. And pre-spawn, spawn, and post-spawn bass can all linger in the same area at the same time. Tonight the frogs are singing like crazy. I wonder if that corresponds to anything bassy. Maybe it's the frog chirp that is the proximate (most direct) signal for the initiation of the bass spawn! You can be sure that there is much interesting fish ecology/biology waiting to be discovered.

"Water Temps Drive the Spawn," by Mark Rogers and Dr Mike Allen, Bass Times, Jan 2006: http://sfrc.ufl.edu/allenlab/Popular%20Articles/Rogers&Allen_BassTimes.pdf

Keep your place in PA and get a winter home in Lake Co, Florida, rural but has lots of small towns, lakes everywhere surrounded by huge live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, tons of homes with boat docks, lakes loaded with world class LMB, fairly low cost of living. Mount Dora, for example, is a quaint town with lots of antique stores, restaurants, etc., and it's on the Harris Chain. Good hospitals nearby for when you get older. But get out of there June thru Sept.

I was bank fishing at a golf course pond with my cousin. From atop a five foot wooden wall, I pitched a brush hog out over some shoreline pickerel weed and into the stained water, an inch past the weeds. A bass struck it so fast and hard it took me totally by surprise, and when I set the hook it was like setting it into a moving freight train. The fish pulled the rod right out of my hands and my rig flew down into the thick pickerel weed below. The rod started jumping further away as the fish pulled on the line. This was a Dobyns Champion 734c rod with a Shimano Chronarch reel, not a rig I would give away without a fight. The rod ultimately became wedged firmly in the weeds and was stuck there, in spite of the fish straining at 65 lb braid with the drag tamped down all the way. The fish flexed the rod this way and that, and she even jumped a couple of times trying to shake the hook. I ran over to my cousin and grabbed his rig which was armed with a shaky head jig. I pulled some ottery looking creature off the hook, and was soon grateful to learn that a shaky head jig is a perfect instrument for retrieving a downed fishing rod. I snagged the jig hook on one of the line guides and reeled in my rod. Well, the big fish was still on! I successfully landed it, 4+ pounds of very impressive largemouth muscle. Of course, I tossed him back. You know, I'd never before had a rod pulled out of my hands, and hope it'll never happen again. I truly admire that powerful fish, the first one that almost got me back.

Thanks, anyway! Campo's was a great deal: a sturdy little skiff with a 15 HP outboard, an anchor, and a live well full of live shrimp, all for around $25. And only a few minutes from Lake Borgne's bounty of specks and reds. Ah, the good old days!