Captain Phil

This happens all the time in Miami. Kids rent jet skis to run down the beach. If they run out of gas or have a breakdown, they can drift offshore. My wife and I once rescued two scuba divers who got separated from their boat. Hypothermia is the least of your problems when you are treading water drifting towards the Bahamas.

Got it. You don't need a rod or a reel to catch bass. I've caught them with a hand line. I have even had bass jump in my boat. ?

What's the challenge? ?

This pretty much sums it up. Spin casting reels are made cheap because the people who buy them don't generally care about quality. What they want is to launch a bait with as little cost and effort as possible. The friction of the line hitting the inside of the cover limits casting distance and accuracy. Most spin casting reels have lousy drags. Under rod spinning reels are more accurate because you can use your index finger to feather the line on the cast. You can't do that with a button. Spin casting reels are supposed to eliminate line tangles. That is a myth. A deep line tangle in a spin casting reel is nearly impossible to dig out. Spin casting is fine for little kids and novice fishermen. If you must, buy the cheapest one you can find for yourself because you will be giving it to your grand kids. Sorry if I offended anyone with my comments. I keep thinking about all those people who showed up at my boat with a Zebco 202. ?

Check out Lake Rousseau in Crystal River north of Tampa. It's a 100 year old rock quarry loaded with giant bass. Here's one below. A 17 pound LM bass was caught there a few years back. Also the old phosphate mines in Tenoroc near Lakeland have good bass fishing.

This is unrelated to shoulder issues, but it may help someone contemplating back surgery. Before I chose to have my surgery, I sought out all possible options. What I discovered was back problems are a major health industry cash cow. Pinched nerves, slipped disks, spinal narrowing, sciatica and neuropathy are so common, millions of dollars in marketing is devoted to these aliments each year. My MRI showed serious narrowing of my spinal canal. After watching a TV commercial, I sent my MRI to one of these companies. A doctor on the phone told me he could fix my back with a laser for $10,000. I asked if the procedure was covered by Medicare or insurance and the doctor said it was not. I am fortunate in that I can go to any doctor I wish, so I passed on that offer. Back surgery is an art. Don't choose your surgeon on the advice of a TV commercial or what someone else tells you. Try everything before going under the knife. Lose weight, don't sit for long periods of time and walk as much as you can. From the first day I met my surgeon until I had my surgery was 6 years. Ask him/her how many of these surgeries he/she has done? Ask how many were successful? Ask if any were unsuccessful and why? If they say they can use a laser to fix anything made of bone, leave and find someone who knows what they are doing.

As a kid, I taught myself to fly fish with a mail order split bamboo rod on the front lawn of our home. Back then, fly fishing was the only "finesse" bass fishing available. Bass reels of the day were clunky and bass plugs were large and heavy. My fly rod could easily cast a popping bug or a streamer fly and I caught a ton of bass with it. When spinning reels like the Mitchell 300 came out, I retired my fly rod. Fly fishing for bass is something many people enjoy. An added bonus is you also catch a lot of large bluegills. I find it somewhat difficult to fly fish out of a bass boat. The line tangles around the trolling motor and it seems you are always retrieving the fly from hangups. Bank fishing is where fly fishing shines. It works especially well when walking the banks of canals we have here in Florida. My PB bass on fly is 6 1/4 pounds. Fly fishing is not about catching large bass. It's about having fun doing something challenging.

I suffered with spinal stenosis for years. I tried epidural injections and they only lasted a few days. A year ago I had a laminectomy and four vertebrae spinal fusion. It relieved my major leg and hip pain when standing, but replaced it with some new pains. It was a big improvement and I can do most everything I want. I was heading for a wheel chair, so I am happy with my result. Unfortunately, surgery can not make you young again. Everyone is different. What works for me may not work for others. I would try everything available. I would avoid anything that requires expensive repetitive treatments unless you enjoy paying your doctor's Porsche payments.

In most Florida bait shops you will find two types of shiners. The small silver ones are farm raised. They aren't worth the trouble and will quickly die on a hook. What you want are large native golden shiners which are much hardier. In years past, I have done my share of shiner fishing. My personal opinion is live bait fishing kills too many bass. Bass caught on shiners are often deeply hooked, so I never used live bait unless the customer demanded it. The majority of my customers were tournament fishermen looking for local knowledge. Back in the day, guides supplemented their income by fishing money tournaments where there were no rules prohibiting professionals. The toughest bass tournament format I ever fished was limited to anglers over 50. Some of the people in those tournaments could have won a Bassmaster tournament with one hand tied behind their back. One actually turned down an invite to the first Classic from Ray Scott himself. You can read about it in the book Bass Boss.

I'll say! Around here they are $20 or more a dozen if you can get them. Don't feel bad, my son who lives in South Florida fishes offshore tournaments. He buys "goggle eyes" for bait and pays $100 a dozen for them.

Spoons were popular back in the day for a number of reasons. The first was weight. The reels of the day were heavy and clunky. The handles spun on the cast and the line was like cable. Even then, a 3/4 oz. Johnson Silver minnow could be cast a country mile. The second was they were relatively weedless. I knew Everglades and Okeechobee fishermen who never fished anything but a spoon and they caught lots of fish. Back then, a pork rind trailer was standard. Later plastic worm trailers were used. A great Everglades nighttime bait was a black Johnson's spoon with a black worm trailer. When I was 13, my parents let me spend my summers with a Navy Chief who fished for bass at night. All he used was a black musky jitterbug. I have one in my lure collection. We never caught a bass less than five pounds on that bait. I remember one bass that struck the lure right at the boat throwing water all over us. Great memories.

Top water prop baits have been catching bass for over 100 years. James Heddon produced the Dowagiac Floating Minnow #150 in 1905. The Devil's Horse and Heddon Tiny Torpedo are still made and are among the best of them all. The Boy Howdy and the NIP-I-DIDDEE were larger versions of the same lure. The Rapala minnow was a game changer. No other bass lure with the possible exception of the plastic worm had a great impact on the sport. The number of Rapala imitators is endless. It is nearly impossible to throw one of these lures on light line without catching a bass of some kind. The reason spoons have fallen out of favor is they have been replaced with buzz baits and plastic frogs. When I was a kid, anglers built their own buzz baits out of teaspoons with a spinner on the front. Al Foss was selling them as early as 1917. Flipping is not new either. Subsistence anglers have been doing that since the invention of the fish hook. Very few bass lures are truly new.

We carry a collapsible landing net in our boat to use with fish over five pounds. I prefer not to use it as it can disturb the protective slim found on bass, but there are times when it's necessary. The pros quit using them because of potential harm to the fish. I'm not sure hands are any better?

Home made rod rack.

Adding orange or red color to a bait can enhance it's appeal. An old trick is to carry a red marker in your tackle box to add color to rattle traps. There is even a pattern called bleeding shad with red color already added. Back in the day, the bass expert was a man called Jason Lucas. He claimed orange was the most attractive color to bass. If you look at many lures you will often find that color somewhere.

I built my first boat from an 8' x 4' sheet of 1/2" plywood with wood planks for the ends and sides. I bought the materials from a local lumber yard and held it together with Elmers wood glue and brass screws. It fit in the back of my parents 1960 Rambler station wagon. My girl friend and future wife worked the sponge in between casts. It looked a lot like a cement mixing trough. If you find a girl like that, keep her. ☺️

When I was a teenager living in Miami I was sitting with a friend on the side of a canal bank with our feet dangling in the water. As we looked in the water, we saw a huge crayfish close to our feet. It was about a foot in length counting the long arms with pincers on the end. It scared us so bad we ran away. Once we gained our nerve, we went back and my friend caught it in a bucket. Up until that time I never thought about crayfish in a lake. We took it home and my friend's dad cooked it and ate it. He said it was good. Back then you could buy live crayfish for bait just like shiners. A buddy's father caught a 10 pound bass on one. I haven't seen them in a bait store in years. One of the best big bass baits I have ever used was a Gambler Craw. My 11 1/2 PB bass was caught on this bait.

I'm curious. Do you need 1 1/2 oz. weights to punch through your mats? I flip heavy topped out hydrilla in the summer and the heaviest weight I have ever used was 3/4 oz. I sometimes must shake the bait to get it to drop through.

When I was guiding for a living, I frequently had customers show up at my boat with huge snap swivels tied on their line. Often they had a plastic worm dangling off the swivel. I was being paid to catch fish, so my guide trips frequently turned into knot tying lessons. Other times, anglers would have their reels spooled with hideous braided line so thick you could pull a boat with it. I was being paid to catch fish, so I would give them one of my outfits to use. If you want to catch more bass, your job is to make your bait look as much like natural bass food as possible. Worms, amphibians, eels and aquatic creatures don't have metal clips on their heads. They glide through the water effortlessly or root for food on the bottom. The ultimate soft bait presentation is weightless. Nothing looks as natural in the water. This is why a wacky rig is so deadly. Heavy buoyant line keeps your lure from falling naturally, not to mention the visibility factor. If you want to catch more bass, go finesse. Big bass bite lures for reasons other than hunger, but that's another story altogether. I am not on this forum to argue, disprove something or promote anything. I have been fishing for bass for over 60 years. Fifty of those years I have been fishing tournaments against some of the best fisherman of that time. I learned from the best of the best and won my share of those tournaments. I have never seen a bass tournament won by someone using a snap swivel to attach his/her bait. I see no problem with using tiny clips if you must.

This subject has been discussed numerous times on this forum. If you are handicapped or otherwise unable to tie knots, you have no choice. If you must use leaders because of toothy critters where you fish, same thing. If you use them because you are lazy or because it makes changing baits easier, you should know you are not catching as many fish as you could. If convenience means more to you than the number of fish you catch, by all means do whatever makes you happy. Hardware, snaps, swivels and the like affect the action of your lure. They look unnatural. They add weight and do nothing to improve the presentation. If by adding hardware you are attempting to enhance the action, learn to tie a loop knot. If adding hardware made the lure work better, the manufacturer would include them in the package.

If you have confidence in "X", you will fish it more and you will catch more fish with "X". You will then conclude "X" is the answer when "Y" might be better. Sometimes old school techniques get lost in time. A good example is the recent Harris Chain Elite Tournament where Buddy Gross sat on one spot with a Carolina Rig. You could have had a truckload of Metanium Reels and Hybrid Hunters and he would have beat you with a cheap bag of worms. If you want to catch more bass, enter a few local tournaments and see how you do. You might learn something new or something old. If you don't care if you catch more fish, that's OK too. ☺️

If you are fishing around toothy fish or are handicapped or impaired in some way that prevents you from tying knots, you have no choice. If not, you are hurting your productivity by using hardware snaps and leaders to attach artificial lures. Anything that dampens vibration affects it's fish catching appeal. If the lure comes with a split ring or clevis, use it. If not, don't add one. Thinner wire makes more vibration which equates to more fish. Thicker wire vibrates less. Closing the end of a spinnerbait has the same stiffening effect as thicker wire. Anglers have noticed this over the years and manufacturers responded. Anything will catch bass sometime. I fished with a fellow when I was young who caught bass with a piece of red rag. Another made his own baits out of a table spoon. I am not saying you can't catch bass with a snap or a leader. What I am saying is you will catch more bass without those impairments.

I can tell you from personal experience that commercial fishing for shiners is tough work and definitely not for wimps. Try throwing a cast net all day and see what happens to your body. The idea that bass become harder to catch around shiner fisherman is a myth perpetrated by fisherman who see bass being caught on shiners when they can't catch fish on whatever it is they are throwing. In Florida, shiners are our bass preferred food. Guides prefer shiner fishing because it works and it takes no skill on the anglers part. Another reason that is not talked about is guides make money selling shiners to customers. Shiner fishermen do not gun around the lake on 24 volt high. They don't fire off cast after cast hoping for a bite. A live shiner soaking under a float signals it's presence with distress vibrations that a bass can zero in on. I love pecan pie. If you sat a slice in front of me for an hour, I doubt I could resist taking a bite. If you were to fish an artificial bait in the same way you fish a shiner, you would catch bass the same way.

This may have been true 40 years ago. I can remember when the big thing was to have a gold stringer of mounted 10 pound plus bass hanging on your wall. Hardly any anglers I know keep bass today. Recently, new Florida rules only allow an angler to keep one bass over 16 inches in length. The problem I have with rules is the State is too easy on giving out tournament exemptions. Hauling a live well full of bass around all day kills too many fish, especially in the heat of summer. Tournaments should drop the limit to three fish per day per angler. This includes pros and locals. This would put the emphasis on big fish, not a bag full of two pounders. Lures and techniques would change, all benefiting the sport. The real issue with Florida producing a world record bass is our bass are in their natural environment, not being force fed trout. States like California are artificially producing larger bass from Florida stock. This is not a bad thing, but comparing the two is not an even match. The other issue is due to fishing pressure alone. 10,000 people a day are moving here, many come here to retire and fish. The largest bass I have ever seen weighed in a Harris Chain tournament was a little over 13 pounds. The fish in the photo below has caught two blocks from my home. In the last ten years, a couple of 17 pound fish have been caught within an hour of my home in Eustis. I doubt there will ever be another world record bass caught anywhere that grew up in a purely natural environment.

As you discovered, large male gators can be very aggressive during the breeding season. It probably thought your boat was a rival. I have seen them challenge small boats running down the Miami canal. The Everglades is no place for a kayak.... ?