Captain Phil

I loved Harry and Charlie. They poked fun at bass fishermen and bass clubs. They fished out of an old Jon boat towed in the back of an old truck. I believe it was called "Old Stump Jumper". There were rivalries and secret spots galore. This was right around the time when high performance bass boats came on the scene and they were always competing with the rich dude in the club. Harry's wife was a piece of work too. Given today's PC Woke world, I doubt they would gain much traction today. To get the joke, you had to be there.

Fishing in the back of the boat can be tough. Did you learn anything?

Great message. God loves you and wants us to love one another. Lots of really smart people say God doesn't exist because they can't find him on a map. They are looking in the wrong place. ☺️

Not if you carry a box like this.

The scariest moment I ever had when fishing happened back in the eighties. We were living in Miami and were mostly fishing offshore for dolphin (Mahi Mahi), sailfish, Marlin and Wahoo. It's 50 miles from Miami to Bimini and a common run in the summer. Often we would stay overnight in Bimini and fish back. This area is what is often called the "Devil's Triangle" and it can be some of the roughest water on Earth. We had a good sized sport fishing boat at the time with twin diesels. The boat was almost new and in excellent condition. One day we were trolling about 40 miles out when the instruments started to act strange. I opened the console and smelled what no one wants to smell on a boat... smoke! It was only me and my wife, so I tried not to panic. I opened the engine hatches and a cloud of smoke poured out of the bilge. I didn't kill the engines as I wasn't sure they would restart. I did turn off the two battery switches and the twin diesels kept running. The smoke stopped and we limped back to Miami. When we got back we found we had an electrical short in the water wash down pump that had melted some of the wiring. To this day I think about my wife and I drifting alone in the Gulf Stream hanging onto a cooler. That is something you never want to experience.

Most of my bass fishing these days is done on the Harris Chain. My home overlooks Lake Eustis and the City ramp is a block away. In the spring, our lakes look like a boat show and the ramp parking lots are full with parking down the street. There must be at least 3-4 local bass tournaments each weekend plus the big TV tournaments. Our bass see thousands of lures all day long. If you are going to catch bass here, you must do something different than the rest. Most anglers are on 24 volt high firing off cast after cast hoping a bass will bite. I know where the bass are so I don't need to run all over looking for fish. To get them to bite, I fish slow and I make multiple casts to the same target. In short, I make the fish bite. I don't need to catch a bunch of fish to make myself happy. I prefer to catch larger bass. The spinnerbait is the tool that I choose 90% of the time..

Most of these baits come in the package with a # 3 1/2" Colorado front blade and a #4 1/2" or larger rear willow. I have been downsizing my rear blades for years to make them run a little slower and deeper. Spinnerbaits do not work for me pulled fast near the surface. If I want to fish faster or shallower, I would use a blade bait.

I'm sure this varies with the area of the country and style of fishing. Here in Florida my best "all around" spinnerbait would be a tandem 3/8 oz. bait with a #3 1/2 Colorado front blade and a #4 willow rear blade with a high quality ball bearing swivel. The wire would be thin to make as much vibration as possible. The blades would be highly polished gold or silver plated. I would carry two baits, one with all gold blades and one with all silver. The gold bait would have a chartreuse and white skirt. The silver bait would have a white skirt. I would pull this bait with a 5/1 casting reel to slow the bait down and pull it as close to cover as possible. These days 90% of my bass are caught this way.

I have always loaded my spinning reels with the line spool label facing up. I use a cotton garden glove to add tension to the line as I reel the line on. Just in case, I stop every 2-3 reel turns and observe how the line looks. If it's coiling, I turn the spool over and try again. If all else fails or if I find my line twisted while in the boat, I let the line trail out behind the boat as I idle. The biggest cause of spinning reel bird's nests is anglers closing the bail by turning the reel handle. I always close my bail manually and check for loops before I cast. May take a little more effort, but it solves a lot of problems.

Welcome to the forum. 63 and retired? You are just a kid. I retired 3 times already and I'm 75 going on 40! Retirement is not the end, it's the beginning. Now you get to do what you like, not what you must. My advice is to stay busy and find something challenging to occupy your time. Humans need a little aggravation to stay sharp. Start a business? Do some volunteer work? Write an autobiography and give it your kids. Stay fit! Buy the best health insurance you can find. Stay away from the TV news channels. Make some friends that share your interests and values. Every day is another chance to get it right. You may live another 40 years or another ten days. Be happy and live each day like it's your last. ☺️

Many older guys want a home on the water with a dock for their boat. They believe this would make it easier to go fishing. If you have ever kept your boat hanging in a dock, you know the truth. Bugs, snakes and creatures of all types can get in your boat and birds crap all over it. Washing it is a hassle and maintenance can be difficult. Covering and uncovering a boat in a dock is a chore in itself. You get to meet dock carpenters on a regular basis. Then there's the problem of theft. I kept my boat on davits for a few years and it was way more work than towing it around.

Many years ago I was fishing with a buddy in the Everglades when I came upon two teen aged boys fishing in a Jon boat. This is the story they told me. They told me they had caught a mud fish and were playing with it by letting the fish run on the line then taking turns cranking it in. On one of the runs the mud fish got hung on the bottom. They went to get their line unhooked when they saw that a gigantic bass had the mud fish sideways in it's mouth. The bass wasn't hooked, so they weren't able to catch it. They both seemed somewhat shaken by the experience and I had no reason to doubt their story. I always wondered how big that bass was?

My wife sold Florida lakefront homes and lots of over twenty years. I worked along side her numerous times. She sold over 250 properties from $30K canal lots to $4 million estates. At one time, it was possible to buy a small fixer home on a Harris Chain canal with a boat dock for $150K. Now that same home is $400K if you can find one. A lakefront cabin is something that never existed in Florida. Our websites were always inundated with emails from Northerners looking for such properties. Environmental restrictions have kept many lakefront lots off the market. Florida is very strict about protecting what few wetlands we have left. This makes true lakefront homes very rare. Demand far outstrips supply driving the price ever higher. Unless you have really big money, living on a lake in Florida is going to be out of the question. Fortunately, our area has literally thousands of lakes with homes nearby. Many of them have public boat ramps. It is far more cost effective to buy a home near a lake than to own a home on the lake proper. Our home overlooks Lake Eustis, one of the Harris Chain lakes. The City boat ramp is at the end of our block. Looking out our living room window is three miles of open water. Bald Eagles nest no more than 100 yards from our driveway. Owning a home on a lake means I am stuck with fishing that lake. Owning a home near 1,000 lakes gives me more options. Rodman is 45 minutes away, the Kissimmee chain is less than an hour and the St. Johns River is a 30 minute drive. If you are dead set on owning a lakefront home in Florida, start saving your money now and hope your Bitcoins grow to over $1M each. ?

Depth is the most used feature of my electronics. My boat has Lowrance units on the front and rear. Before flashers, if you couldn't touch bottom with a pole you were in a hole! The Harris Chain has changed much in the recent years with more fish offshore. The newer units help when locating shell bars and rock piles. These days I fish for the pure pleasure of being on the water. How many fish I catch does not make my day.

I built my first "fish flasher" from a Heathkit. In Florida, we have never used a lot of electronics as most of our bass fishing is done shallow. As electronics has gotten better, I find myself using it more than I used to. Personally, I am not a fan of 360 degree "see the fish bite your lure" electronics, but I can see how it would be an advantage in tournament fishing. Do you really want to turn bass fishing into a video game? Why not just stay home and fish on your TV? I prefer to use my experience to catch fish. Am I missing some fish? Probably so. Does it bother me that someone else finds them with a computer? Not really.

I suffered with Spinal Stenosis for years. This is a common condition that causes severe nerve pain. My doctor prescribed Gabapentin. I take the minimum dose at bedtime and it helpes me greatly. It also helps me to sleep. Last year I underwent back surgery to fix this issue and am now much better. Everyone is different, but you might want to ask your doctor about taking Gabapentin at night.

Sleep is very important to your health, especially when you get older. One of the best things about being retired is take a short nap in the afternoon. If you are going to nap, set your alarm and never nap over 30 minutes or you will disrupt your night time sleep pattern. I go to bed every night around 9:30. I'm up at 5:30. If you can't sleep in the middle of the night, don't get up or you will regret it the next day. Fishing at dawn is not necessary. The best fish of the day bite between 11 AM and 2 PM.

I am probably old enough to be your Dad. ☺️ My fishing reel journey started in the early sixties. At that time, the "Cadillac" of bass fishing reels was the Pflueger supreme. This was one of the first free spool casting reels. As I remember it cost around $20, a fortune at the time. No one had any money back then. We weren't poor, but things we take for granted today were for rich folks. My first love for fishing reels was the Mitchel 300 spinning reel. These reels were very smooth with a great drag system. With light mono, you could cast lures lighter and farther than you never could before. They were somewhat heavy by today's standards and the bail springs would break often. This came with the territory back then. Early black and red Ambassadeurs were what most people wanted in a casting reel and I had dozens of them. Anyone could disassemble and reassemble them and we did. When the ambassadeur 5500C came out, we thought things couldn't get any better. The best you could do was have one of these on a pistol grip Speed Stick Rod. I still have one in my garage. They were a high quality "high speed" 5/1 reels and the standard in bass fishing for a long time. When you are young and strong, fishing rod and reel weight is not an issue. I started using Shimano reels because of the quality and light weight. Once you start down this path, all other reels don't measure up to Shimano. The only Diawa reels I got into were their Black Gold spinning reels. They were a simple, light, inexpensive workhorse reel that is very hard to top.

About twenty years ago, my wife called me out into the yard of our home in Central Florida to look at a large snake that was crawling across our driveway. Some furniture delivery guys were trying to back down the driveway when they saw this snake blocking their truck. The snake was a huge emerald tree Boa. The area where we live has a lot of woods and we suspected the snake was an escaped pet. We never saw that snake again. What commonly happens is a pet grows too large for the home and it escapes or is released. In Miami a gigantic python was caught that made it onto the Johnny Carson show. For years, cats and dog kept disappearing from the neighborhood until someone found the snake. Near Orlando, a baby was killed by a pet Burmese Python. Why anyone wants a snake for a pet is beyond me? Get a dog or a cat.

I once witnessed a fight between a snake and a blue heron. I was fishing in the Kissimmee Chain when I noticed a blue heron standing on the shore with a good sized snake wrapped around it's bill. The snake was wrapped along the entire length of it's long bill. At first I thought the snake had the upper hand. The bird didn't seem fazed. The heron proceeded to bang its bill into the ground over and over again until the snake fell off dead. It seems herons are tougher than snakes.

I bought my Ranger 178RT fully equipped and ready to fish with a Merc 75 4 stroke, front and dash mounted Lowrance Hook Series electronics, extra pedestal seat, Minn Kota 24 volt foot controlled trolling motor, three batteries with in-built charger, trailer with fancy aluminum wheels with spare and a boarding ladder. It listed for $28K. It's a wonderful little boat that rides much bigger than it looks. Given the price of boats and gas, I am very happy with my purchase.

I have lived, fished and hunted in Florida all my life. Most of my fishing and hunting has been in the Everglades. I can count on one hand the number of times I have encountered an actual poisonous snake. The vast majority of snakes you see near the water in Florida are "brown water snakes" which are not poisonous. They do grow quite large. It is not a good idea to approach any snake no matter what you think they are. If you leave them alone, they will leave you alone. Do not clean fish on the shoreline of any lake, rock pit or canal. Most snake bites occur when you step or sit on one, so watch where you are walking or sitting. You do not need to kill every snake you see in your yard. Black racers are beneficial as they eat things you don't want in your house. Most coral snake sightings are king snakes. King snakes eat other snakes. Florida is full of exotic reptiles, fish, birds and animals. Many are escaped pets.

Hybrids (sunshine bass) have been stocked in Florida since 1974. They don't breed naturally, so they need to be restocked. Between 2017 and 2019 over 900,000 Hybrids have been stocked in the Harris Chain. The largest I have caught here has been about 3 pounds. They are hard fighting rascals. The easiest way to catch them in the Chain is by trolling Rattle Traps.

I don't fish a lot of jerk baits. I know they are effective, but I use other options I like better. I have had the best jerk bait luck with the traditional Rapala minnow. I throw these lures with 8 pound mono on a spinning rod. I find that anything heavier reduces the action. This lure gives me two presentations in one cast. At first, I twitch it on top like a traditional top water lure. If that does not draw a strike, I pull it under the water and jerk it back to the boat. There are days when one works better than the other. This is a shallow water technique that works in Florida especially in the spring.

I am 75 years old and have been fishing in Florida since I was a child. Florida is one of the best bank fishing areas in the nation. It's full of canals, rock pits, irrigation ditches and sink holes. An amazing number of them hold bass. Many of those bass have never seen a lure. Anywhere you can cast from the bank has potential. You do not need to go out in the Everglades to find bass. Every neighborhood in Florida has these places. When I lived in Pembroke Pines, our home was on a canal that was full of 5-8 pound bass. I know as I put them there. If you have a question about fishing a body of water, it's best to ask first. You may not get a good reception, but there are more than enough to choose from. Some places allow fishing for residents only. If you befriend someone that is, you could find yourself in a good place. Roadside canals can be very productive, especially if there is a flood control spillway nearby. Take some time to scout around. If you look, you will find what you are looking for.