bigbassin'

50lb straight braid is the standard like everyone else has said. Personally I always use 16lb Mono on a MH 7' rod, I've never had an issue with breaking off that I can remember. 3/0 J-hook. This is probably location dependent. I'm typically drifting live shiners over eel grass flats so I'm able to keep my bait just over top of the cover. On lakes like Rodman, I've always heard the key is to let your shiner swim several feet under the hyacinth so I could understand why you'd want straight braid for that. If you're comfortable feeling what your bait is doing on slack line and you are fishing sparse cover or matted cover that the shiner won't get tangled in swimming under, I'd recommend free lining the shiner. I'd use a cork if it's really windy to push the shiner over a flat or if you're fishing around wood cover and need to know exactly where you're bait is at.

Everyone I've ever met from that area is a snook fisherman. I would think it's probably easier to find saltwater/brackish water access in that area then freshwater. Without knowing too much about the area and where in Port Charlotte your located, Okeechobee and Istokpoga are probably around an 1-1.5 hours from you.

We're already at the point in the year where fishing from 10:30 am to 6:00 pm isn't going to be very productive, particularly if there isn't any shade for them. For lures, weightless senkos, speedworms, flukes, swimbaits, and spooks are about all I'd be throwing for the next couple months of the bank. Are the beds sandy craters or flat patches? From what I've seen, if it's craters those are probably tilapia beds not bass.

I use the elevation, and that is correct that I use the Chuluota Gage. Every lake and pond has big bass in it, just pick a couple and put in some time. Personally I'd focus on eel grass flats, most of the lakes have them, they produce fish, and you can just drift them in a kayak so you aren't constantly trying to fix your position. I don't typically fish for Crappie, but C.S. Lee is supposed to be really productive from February to April. Outside of that, I don't know many people that targeted them year round.

You probably won't catch any giants out of the Econ, a 4 pounder is the biggest I've seen caught out of there, but you can definitely catch some bass if the conditions are right. Check the river gauge on USGS's site, as long as it's under 2 feet the fishing is decent, but lower than that, say 1.25 ft, is when the fishing is really good. As the river drops, it also gets cleaner making sight-fishing possible and groups of 1 pound fish can be spotted cruising sandbars. That was the most effective method for me, along with others I've spoken too. Outside of sight-fishing, targeting laydowns and brush on river bends is effective, just be prepared because there is a ton of cover out there so don't get discouraged if you aren't catching anything right away. About all you need for lures is senkos, speedworms, your favorite craw lure, and a jig. If you're interested in other species, the Econ is a pretty good place for bream (the red bellies in particular were the largest I've seen anywhere), gar (we've caught them up to 20 pounds), and catfish (Channels up to 5 pounds, bullheads, and speckled cats) as well. I've never tried it, but I've always heard the fishing for sunshine bass and shad are supposed to be really good around C.S Lee at this time of the year.

One thing I don't see often when these skipping topics come up is how you're fishing (boat, shore, kayak, wading) and how this changes your motion (at least for me). On a boat or from shore, roughly the same height above the water in both circumstances, the rock skipping motion people always mention is the way I do it as well. I exaggerate the final upward motion and my casting hand is typically in line with my shoulder. I'm not sure if this gives the lure a little bit more uplift or just accelerates the spool faster, but regardless it adds another 2-3 hops onto my skips. Distance from your target makes a huge difference on this. From 25 yards out I'm probably good for one maybe two skips, at 10 yards out I can get 5-8 hops depending on the lure and wind. Wading is the easiest way to skip the lure where you want in my opinion. You're still standing on solid ground so your able to make fluid casts with no problem, and low enough that your torso is inline with what you're trying to get under. This lets you just put a line drive cast under the cover, and as long as it had enough force it'll skip once or twice since it had a near horizontal trajectory. I can't seem to figure out skipping from a kayak, but a sidearm cast gets you under most docks anyways.

I just recently moved up here from Florida, no boat yet. Eventually if I get one, I'd love to get on Harris and Jordan. Any advice on fishing the Triangle area from shore? Seems to be a lot of parks that border water in this area so no shortage of places for me to try, and the eno river looks like a cool place to try as well once it warms up enough to wade.

From shore, your tackle needs to be focused on fishing grass. I seem to normally have a jig on during that time of year. Since you'll find bass at every range of the spawn you can swim it for pre/postspawners if they're active, make casts to any isolated hard cover you see, and they work well on beds as well. Flukes, senkos, speed worms, and swimbaits are safe bets you can throw anywhere and into anything from shore. Rattle traps fished around grass edges and over flats can perform pretty well during the spring, but from shore the grass can sometimes be too thick or shallow to make the hassle worth it.

Fishing the Withlacoochee in that picture?

Squarebill is something that I've considered as well, see a lot of recommendations for that. We did have a pretty decent front move through this past week, Florida bass don't really seem to care for aggressive presentations when the temperature drops. A week of warm weather or so and I'll definitely give it a shot. I'm not sure if the area gets drawn down, I would think that if it does this would be the time of year the water would be at its lowest but the main use of the canal is stormwater control and we've had way more rain than typical for this time of year. We're probably about two weeks away from when I expect to start seeing beds, about a month till the spawn is in full swing. My assumption is that the bass have to spawn within the canal, it's dammed right before entering into the bay at the bottom end and dammed where it meets a natural river roughly 6 miles upstream. Guessing from counting down lures, the edge of the riprap is 30 feet off the bank in 7ish foot of water. From there on out it seems to be about 15 foot, with a flat rectangular bottom, very soft (probably mud). In this situation what do they key in on during spawn? I'm guessing open patches of sand within the riprap that are out of the current but could they just spawn right on the riprap? It's also possible that all the bass have been washed in from the river when the dam is opened. I've been told there are snook in the canal as well so unless someone put them there they just moved in when the bayside floodgate opened since they can't spawn in freshwater.

I recently started fishing a canal (although it's wider than any river I've ever fished, maybe 100+ yards across) with about 6 foot of visibility and lined with riprap as the only cover as far as I can tell. Lift stations and bridges every quarter mile or so, never done good bass fishing around bridges though. In two trips (both about 2 hours) I've caught one 6 pounder and 4 fish between 1 to 3 pounds, all on a green pumpkin jig. My thought process is to just keep pounding away with the jig, just curious how those of you with more experience on this type of water would fish it?

I didn't know there were two different LFS reels, but that would explain why the two I own are different. I figured it was because they were different years (2013 and 2015). Anyways I've owned one or both? of the LFS reels and they've been solid. The one I purchased in 2013 likely had a thousand hours on it before I retired it this year, but it was only retired because I ran it over with my truck. It still works pretty decent, just sticks every tenth crank or so. Between durability and fishability they definitely get my seal of approval. I purchased the mb earlier this year to replace the previously mentioned LFS, and I've loved it. This was my best year ever for fish over 5 and even took multiple over 8 and every one was caught on the mb. Reel handled all of the fish great, both the reel and the drag is really smooth. I also think it increased my cast distance by about 4-5 yards for what it's worth. Having not owned it for a full year I can't do an apples to apples comparison on durability, but it probably got around 125ish hours of fishing and got dunked while wading several times. The one knock on the mb is that if you like your reel absolutely locked down with no slippage this isn't the one for you. Every fish over 5 that had the drag locked down on them were still able to take some line. To me this isn't a big deal and I normally fish with closer to 4ish pounds of drag anyways but I could see a problem if you anticipate using the reel for punching.

I've seen this done before, but I don't see the advantage. My hook-up ratio is pretty solid with flukes and I'd be concerned with throwing fish on the treble. As @JustJames said though, I feel grass is where flukes really excel so even if the hook-up ratio were to slightly increase I think this modification would increase snags and reduce the number of fish that get to see your lure.

I've never tried the hand warmer trick, but I've always heard to put them on the bottom of your wrist. Maybe that will help a little?

I've heard the ramps have been having clogged with vegetation as well. You might want to have a backup plan to fish somewhere else in the area just in case. Biggest fish I've ever seen weighed in came from Rodman (12.4) and a couple over 8 were caught as well during the same tournament. It definitely produces good fish but having only been there once and not personally doing great I can't really give much advice on how to fish it.

A couple of the guys that actively post here are from down there and they may be able to chime in with more, but I'll give you what I've learned from the few trips I've taken for them: First, the farther south the better. Another 30-45 minutes south of Miami and from the looks of it every single body of water had schools of peacocks in them. The canals are popular and that's where I got my first from (I think the c-8 but not totally sure without looking at a map) however the man-made ponds with clear water and predominantly rock bottom seemed to be the ticket. The one problem with the ponds is that probably 9/10 where private property so if you try the ponds, you'll want to find an area on the map that has several within a small area so you won't have to go far to find somewhere you are actually allowed to fish. For lures, an x-rap worked as fast as possible was our most productive. A perch-type color was the best, and the 9cm size outfished the 7 and 11. I've only gone for them a handful of times so I don't know if this is a consistent size/color pattern or just how its worked out. The x-raps were a good search bait as well because they'll chase them all the way back to the bank even if they won't hit them. This lets you cover a lot of water quickly and if there are peacocks there you'll know within a few casts. Once you find them, they typically just chase your lure for a couple of casts but will eventually slam it on the 5th or 6th cast. Once you get one in the school, it becomes every cast until you pick off the willing fish. We were getting triple-hookups going once the first fish would finally commit. If you can't get them to commit to lures, you at least know where they are so you can always go to a bait shop and get live shiners and come back to the spot. They'll hit a shiner just about as soon as it hit the water it seemed.

I'd say none of the above. I prefer a medium fast for lipless fishing. The fast action lets you rip it out of the grass more effectively than a moderate, while the medium power gives it a little more give than a mh which I feel helps me land more fish on trebles. As far as secondary techniques, I wouldn't even consider throwing a senko on a moderate action. When I've tried in the past my hookup ratio has been terrible, plus the extra give the rod has seems to let the fish tangle you up in cover more often. I only fish mono, so if you use braid maybe you wouldn't have these issues but I have no plans of ever purchasing another moderate action rod.

I use the same medium/fast rod with 12 lb mono for all of those techniques, with the exception being I'll occasionally step up to a mh/f for flukes if I'm around a lot of brush/laydowns and want to get the fish turned immediately.

Earlier this year I caught one I swore was about a 9.5 and a new pb (I typically get a couple over 8 every year, and my pb was is 9lb 4 oz) but my scale only put it at 8.5. I tried this same experiment with a 10 pound dumbbell to verify the accuracy and it read the weight as only being 8...it's rough knowing I probably caught a pb that was nearing 10 but my scale was off.

You're going to want the super fluke, not the fluke. 4/0 EWG is my go-to, but jigheads work as well if you're trying to get it down in the water column. As far as how to fish it: 1. Giving it soft but quick twitches as soon as it hit hits the water. This will keep it on the top of the water and present a more subtle walk the dog. 2. Allowing it to sink to the desired depth and working it like a jerk bait, just with softer twitches. You can pause as long as you want between twitches, this is probably where most of my strikes occur. 3. Dead sticking the fluke for 10-20 seconds at a time, hop it, then repeat the process. 4. Target casting. Just get the fluke right on top of your desired target and allow it to sink all the way to the bottom. Give it a few twitches then work it back to you. 4. Carolina rigged with long pauses. 5. Dead sticking on a wacky rig. 6. Rigged backwards on an ewg it will fall away from you, if you're bad at skipping or the overhang is too close to the water to skip this'll let you get a foot or two under the cover. 7. Chatterbait trailer. 8. Never done it, but I've seen a lot of videos with folks fishing them on underspins in cold water, particularly for spots. We don't have that scenario down in Florida but it might be something to consider if you do. As far as location, flukes basically work everywhere, but I feel like they really excel in grass where other subsurface lures may not be able to get to, and when targeting schooling bass. They're also one of the easiest lures to skip, so I give them the nod pretty often for dock fishing/getting under branches. Flukes are also pretty good as a follow up lure if you miss a top water strike. Watermelon red is by far my favorite color for these, and for whatever reason flukes and trick worms are the only lures I ignore the conventional method of black/blue or junebug in dirty water, watermelon in clear water. As long as there's at least 6" of visibility I'll be throwing watermelon red, anything less and I probably wouldn't throw a fluke. Pearl and Arkansas Shiner are both solid colors as well I just don't feel the need to carry all three colors.

This was my thought process as well, I feel I'm squeezing water out of my frogs every 4-5 casts when fishing them properly so I'm not sure you'd even be able to finish your retrieve without the frog getting water logged. I'd guess the hookup ratio would be horrible on it, but I might be wrong. Not something I plan on trying anytime soon, just curious if any of y'all had ever seen or tried something like this.

Saw someone on a different site mention C-rigging a hollow body frog, but they didn't go in to any detail on it. After googling it, I found a video of someone catching a decent bass while dragging a frog with what was probably a 1 ounce weight in front of it. Definitely something that never would of crossed my mind to try. Anyone else ever try this?

A 3/8 ounce jig is always my go to for a new location. I'll start by dragging it to see if there's any noticeable structure or cover. If that isn't producing I'll start swimming it along the shoreline.

Thanks for the info y'all. A trip out there doesn't appear to be in my future at the moment, I've just always been curious as to how people fish the area.

Looking at a satellite view, where are the flats? Is that just a nickname for when the preserve floods or is the green area within the outer canal all actually water covered in vegetation and you can't tell from the map?