Captain Phil

Perhaps this is a regional thing? Here in Florida, red flake makes a huge difference. Every great bass lure had some red somewhere, why not in a soft plastic? Watermelon Red is one of our best colors. Christmas (red and green flake) has been a tournament winner on the Chain for 20 years.

Green, red or both.

I grew up fishing in South Florida. Tarpon are very hard to land on lures. You would do better with a fly rod, but that comes with a whole other set of issues. The absolutely best way to catch tarpon is with live bait. In fresh water, they are suckers for big shiners. In salt water, you want to use live mullet or a large shrimp for bait. When fishing for tarpon with live bait, you don't jerk the rod to set the hook. You let "Rodney" do it. This means you wait until the rods bends before you jerk. In any case, you will be lucky if you land two out of ten fish.

Save your money, start off small and pay cash. The fun of every purchase you make in your life will come in the hunt. When I was young, I was hungry for "stuff". I wanted fancy cars, boats, houses and anything I thought would make me happy. Six months after I bought those things, I wanted something else. A small Jon boat will get you on the water. Better yet, be-friend one of your boat owner buddies and fish out of his boat. The best boat is an "OPB" (other peoples boat). Seriously, you have your whole life ahead of you. There will be time to realize every dream you have and more.

I graduated from high school in 1965. I landed a job with the Burroughs Corporation as a Field Engineer trainee. This was a fancy title for an adding machine mechanic. Everything was mechanical back then. I eventually moved into accounting machines. In 1970, I left with two other employees to start my own service company. Mechanical accounting machines went electronic in the late seventies and I had to learn basic assembler programming. Computers came in the eighties and we wrote a lot of software and trained a lot of older machine operators to the computer. Many made the transition, many could not. Some people have a mental block against any change. This is normal, but it can get in the way of personal progress. Time marches on, change can be good even when it seems bad. Can you imagine a world without the Internet? How about no TV? When I was a teenager, many fathers would drop over with a heart attack before they were 60. Today, heart surgery is common. I turn 75 in February. I would be confined to a wheel chair if it weren't for the miracle of the back surgery I had ten months ago. I have friends who are in their eighties and still going strong. Many young people on this forum will see their 100th birthday. The past wasn't all that good.

Oh Yeah... Some years back in a club tournament I had a big fish located in some pads. The non-boater I drew was a nubee who hadn't fished much. First thing out of the gate I ran to that fish. I worked the fish for some time, but she wouldn't bite. My partner in the back hung a Rattle Trap in the pads. As he was attempting to jerk it loose, the lure popped off and my big fish ate it. Sometimes it's better to be lucky.

I spent my entire life getting up before the sun to go fishing because I thought fishing early was more productive. When I started fishing bass tournaments in the seventies, I had no choice but to fish all day. I discovered that the time of the day or night has nothing to do with when a bass will bite. You have to adjust your technique to the time of day. The top water bite is normally better in the morning and evening. A bass will move farther to your bait when the sun is low. By 9-10 AM, the fish are positioned differently. They hold tighter to the cover. This puts them under pads, deep in weed beds or around docks. These days, I don't get on the water until 8 AM at the earliest. I have always caught my biggest bass between 11 AM and 2 PM. Night fishing is all about sound and vibration. I am starting to doubt that the line you use has any effect on bass. People catch bass these days on some of the most awful ugly braided line they make. Line colors are all over the rainbow. I use mono, braid and fluorocarbon line and I don't see any discernible difference in productivity. If you have confidence in the line you use, you will catch more fish with that line. What do the bass think? They don't.... I enjoyed Doug Hannon's videos, but he was fishing in a different time and place. Most of his bass fishing was done in remote isolated lakes in the Ocala National Forest. That is a completely different environment than a lake with hundreds of bass fisherman running around all day. Bass adapt to that environment and become much harder to catch.

Zoom Fluke

Every fishing trip is a fishing lesson. After 60 years of fishing, I am still learning. You can't learn to fish from a book or a YouTube video. Those things can help you to get started in the right direction. They can't replace time on the water.

Fishing off the bank is tough. No one wants to fish within arms length of a horde of fellow anglers. If I was faced with that prospect, I would be looking for other places to fish. Some of the best bass fishing I have seen has been in small residential ponds. Golf course lakes can be especially good. You may have to ask permission to fish these places. If you find a good one you may have it all to yourself. The Harris Chain ramps near my home are packed from January until April. There is at least two tournaments every weekend that time of year. If the hassle gets to much for me, I have 3-4 small backup lakes to fish. You don't have to drive all the way to Canada to fish in solitude.

Florida has a five fish limit. It could take anywhere from 15 to 30 pounds to win one of our local tournaments. 10% of the fisherman have been catching 90% of the fish forever. This has nothing to do with equipment, it's the skill and knowledge level of the angler that makes the difference. If you look at any tournament score board today, you can plainly see that fact. Despite enormous tournament fishing pressure, the same anglers keep winning. If you want to be in the top 10%, you should learn to be a better angler instead of belly aching about fishing pressure. Please don't take this personally. Someone always finds a way to win, be that someone.

Anyone out there have a Ted Williams fishing reel?

10% of the bass fisherman catch 90% of the fish. The rest are like you describe. On any given weekend, there are so many boats at our ramps that you have to park down the street. So how is it that it still takes 15-25 pounds to place in one of our local bass tournaments? Bass fishing is not supposed to be easy. When you fish as many tournaments as I have, you learn not to be concerned with what other people are doing.

Buck Perry. Wow, haven't heard his name in a long time. The grandfather of structure fishing.

My father worked for Sears his entire life. Ted Williams had his own line of tackle sold through Sears stores. My father took me to the store to meet him when I was small. I remember him being a huge man. He was one of the greatest hitters of all time and a fantastic angler.

The color of the water and its clarity determines the color of the worm. Light green or clear water means watermelon colors. Dark, stained or turbid water means dark worms. Black can catch a fish anywhere at any time. Adding color can often make your worm stand out above the rest. June Bug is dark grape with green flakes. Red flake is often better because everyone is throwing the same worm. In Florida, black and blue works better in the winter months. A killer worm that is not talked about much is Christmas or June Bug with green and red flakes. Zoom calls this June Bug Red. I have caught bass on every color imaginable, from natural worm color to bright pink and everything in between. What a bass sees is beyond me?

Short story about my experience with the Tiny Torpedo. Twenty years ago I fished a State Federation tournament on West Lake Toho. I wasn't going to fish it, but my buddy needed a non boater so he could fish. I drew a hot dog young fisherman as a boater. He had a very expensive Ranger boat. When he opened his rod box, he had at least ten rod and reel combos costing every bit of $800 each. I carried a couple of rods that must have looked ancient to him. He didn't talk much, just tried to look like what he thought a bass pro should look like. It was in the dead of winter and a nasty cold front had blown through. He spent the entire morning flipping grass beds without a bite. He front ended me so bad all I could do was fan cast out of the back of the boat. I took out my spinning rod with 8 pound mono and tied on a chrome and black tiny torpedo. When I started to catch fish, he made a couple of comments. When I had my limit, he went through his tackle looking for the same bait. He found a similar bait and caught a fish. This old man won that day. The Heddon Tiny Torpedo is one of the deadliest bass baits ever created. You must throw this bait on light tackle for it to work it's best.

Back in South Florida, I often fly fished for bass. I bought a cheap bamboo fly rod and some C level line when I was about 16 years old. I learned to cast in the front yard of my home. I used mostly poppers and streamers that I tied myself. Fly fishing caught more bass in the days before plastic worms as bass plugs were big and clunky. The best fly fishing was walking a canal bank where you could cast to the other side. Fly fishing catches a lot of small bass. I have caught bass up to six pounds with a fly rod, but it's rare. I once landed a 17 pound Tarpon fly fishing off a canal bank. Fly fishing for bass is more work than you might expect. Repeatedly casting a fly requires stamina and dedication. It's not the same thing as soaking a plastic worm. Then there's the line coils to contend with. If fishing from a bass boat, the line tangles around the trolling motor, your feet and everything else nearby. Fly fishing works best in clear water. I suggest you try it and see how it works for you. I still have my fly rod and all my flies. but I haven't touched them in years.

Think about this. You are a fisherman in the thirties during the depression. You own a small row boat that you built yourself. You can't afford a fishing reel or a store bought lure. All you have is a 12 foot cane pole and three feet of linen line. Your family needs to eat. You make a lure out of a piece of rope, cloth or whittle one out of a hunk wood. You take your cane pole and reach as far back in the cover as you can and work your homemade lure back in the woods. You row with one hand and work your heavy pole with the other all day or all night long. Your arms ache, the mosquitoes are terrible, it's cold in the winter and hot in the summer. A five pound bass engulfs your lure and you swing her into the boat. That's how what we now call flipping was born.

If you are a bank fisherman, Florida fishing is made for you. Florida is literally covered with canals, rock pits, sinkholes and drainage ditches. Most all of them contain bass. In South Florida you can't walk more than a few blocks in any residential neighborhood without seeing water. I grew up fishing those canals. As a boy I caught bass from the outflow of a sewage treatment plant and it was one of my best spots. My son lives in Weston on a canal. He and my grandson have both caught eight pound bass in their back yard. If you can't catch bass in Florida, you aren't trying.

There were many regional variations of the long pole technique. Jason Lucas talked about them briefly near the last chapter of his book "Lucas on Bass Fishing". That was in the fifties. I first learned about flipping in the eighties when Dee Thomas won an Okeechobee Tournament. As I remember a nasty cold front came through, which was perfect for Dee. At first, we couldn't believe fish would stay right under our boats. We though they moved off as we approached. Like everyone, I tried flipping for a while without much success. It wasn't until I moved to Central Florida twenty five years ago that I discovered how deadly it can be. Harris Chain bass are some of the most disinterested bass I have ever seen. Except for the spring of the year, you have to hit them on the head to get a bite.

Dee is known as a West Coast angler and the father of the flipping technique. He was the first person to adapt this technique to bass tournaments. For many years before Dee, subsistence fisherman were using similar techniques to catch bass to survive. Here in the South they called this fishing "Jigger Poling" or "Doodle Socking". There were no plastic worms or craws back then. Most pole lures were made from feathers, cloth or rope. Popular pole fishing lures were also buzz baits or even wooden plugs. I remember watching these guys as a kid as they rowed down the Everglades canals thrashing the water with their long poles. One angler would troll a musky jitterbug at night. It takes a lot of strength and endurance too keep this up for any length of time. Big bass don't move far for their food, they don't need to. What Dee discovered was how small a bass strike zone is at times. There are always some bass shallow. Here in Florida, there could be a giant right under your boat at any time. Getting that fish to bite can be a challenge, especially when pressured or after a cold front. When bass food drops silently from above, it looks natural. Do this enough times, and you will catch that fish. If you want to catch the biggest bass of your lifetime here in Florida, bring your flipping stick.

I recently purchased a new Zodias 6'10" MH coupled with a Shimano Chronarch MGL 150 HG reel. I use it for worm, Senko and fluke fishing. It's the most sensitive rod I have ever used. The quality is exceptional and this combo is worth every penny of what I paid. I haven't thrown any hard or spinner baits with it yet, but I don't see why it wouldn't work just as well. These rods are extremely light in weight. I think this rod is the finest bass rod I have ever used. When my budget allows, I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one.

What many people don't understand is that bass fishing is more like hunting than fishing. If you want to catch a mess of fish, there are easier fish to catch than bass. A major part of the fun is the feeling of accomplishment you get when you outsmart a big fish. Personally, I could care less about catching a two pound bass. In sixty years of fishing for bass, I am sure I have caught thousands like that. Florida contains the fish I am looking for. My home lakes are better now than they were twenty years ago. Bass fishing is not for everyone. When it's in your blood, it's all you think about.

Couldn't have been stated any better. Most people have at least 3-4 different careers. I've been an office machine repairman, computer programmer, salesman, consultant, Realtor, author, charter boat captain and fishing guide. Being a fishing guide was the worst job of them all. In all but one, I was my own boss. Nothing is worse than working for an idiot. College wasn't for me in 1965, but things are different these days. I firmly believe we need more trade schools and definitely more apprenticeship programs. Back in my day, a company would train their employees. The best companies will train you then pay you well so you will stay around. Read these posts a few times more and you will be on the right path. Good Luck!