Captain Phil

Some years back I fished a sizable tournament at Toho. It was a team tournament with about 150 plus boats. Two guys in one of the boats broke down at the takeoff. They spent the entire day fishing with only their trolling motor and won the tournament. Fishing at the ramp is prohibited. Fishing in the area is not. Too many tournament competitors spend the whole day running instead of fishing. Another time, I fished a local team Classic out of Loxahatchee. My partner and I never started the big engine. The tournament officials sat in lawn chairs and watched us bale 6 pound bass all morning. ☺️

You don't need a big spinnerbait to catch big bass. It's where and how you fish them that makes the difference. Big bass won't move far for their food. They lay in wait and catch their meal using as little energy as possible. For this reason, you must put the spinnerbait as close to the fish as possible. I look for pads where I can cast past the target and move my rod so the bait runs directly under the pads. I like to catch big bass. 2-3 pound fish are always welcome, but the fish I am looking for are 5 pounds and up. Once I catch one like that, I am usually ready to go home. I went out this morning for a few hours. I left the ramp at 9 AM. The water is 88 degrees and the sun was directly overhead. In the pads I caught a very scrappy 5 pound bass on a Hildebrand spinnerbait. If you look close you can see it was hung on the trailer hook. If you don't use a trailer hook you are missing a lot of bass.

You may be surprised to find how many bass tournaments are won fishing at or very near the ramp. ?

Rod actions printed on the rod don't mean much. I have to hold a rod to determine if it works for me. I am also older than most on this forum, so light rod weight is important. I want my spinnerbait rods to have a lot of backbone so I can get a good hook set. At the same time, I want the top 18" or so to have a little bend in it. Casting spinnerbaits with a broom stick is hard work. The flexible tip makes it easier. I use the lightest rods I can find that meet that criteria. 95% of the time I use two spinnerbaits, a Hildebrand Okeechobee Special in chartreuse and white with tandem gold blades and a White Terminator with silver blades. Both are 3/8 oz. I often downsize the top blade so the bait runs slower and deeper. I modify these baits with a Zoom split tail and a trailer hook. These two spinnerbaits do everything I need a spinnerbait to do. The rod I chose is not necessarily the rod you should use. Everyone is different. The quality of the bait itself is significant in spinnerbait fishing. There is a big difference in the fish catching ability of a $10 spinnerbait and a Walmart special. Cheap spinnerbaits have thick wire and little vibration. The blades don't turn freely enough and the blade finish is dull. Most anglers fish spinnerbaits too fast and are afraid to throw them into deep cover. The first bait I throw in a day of fishing is a spinnerbait. Many days it's all I need.

Some people have asked me what rods I carry when bass fishing in Florida. I carry five outfits. On occasion, I bring a sixth which I will add at the end. Here is my list: 1. Spinnerbaits - 6.5'-7' medium action graphite casting rod, 5/1 reel, 20 pound green Big Game mono. Works for Chatterbaits too. 2. Rattle Traps - 6.5' - 7' medium heavy action graphite casting rod, 7/1 reel, 30 pound green Power Pro no leader. Can also be used for frogs. 3. Top Water - 6' medium action graphite casting rod, 7/1 reel, 20 pound green Power Pro no leader 4. Worms, flukes and Senkos - 6'10" Shimano Zodias heavy action, 7/1 reel, 15 pound fluorocarbon no leader. Can also be used for light crank baits 5. Flipping Stick - 7.5' heavy action graphite, Shimano flipping trigger reel. 25 pound green Big Game mono. The 6th option is a spinning reel loaded with 8 pound green Maxima mono. I use this for finesse fishing and light top waters like Rapalas and Tiny Torpedos. What's your list?

Frog fishing is one of my favorite ways to fish for bass. Unfortunately, it's my worst when it comes to numbers of fish in the boat. Frogs are great search baits, not so great as fish catchers. If you want to land more fish, go to a top water plug. The Tiny Torpedo is a deadly bait on light tackle. It works great in pockets and along covered weed lines. For deeper cover fishing, I prefer a Devil's Horse. You need to be fearless and accurate to fish these baits. I throw them back in the cover into places where other's won't go. Do I get hung on occasion? Yes. I use 50 pound braid and haul the fish out before it digs in. The stock hooks are too week for this type of fishing. Changing the back hook to a #4 helps.

I know some anglers who could catch more fish off the bank than many of the tournament pros. There is much more than fish to fishing tournaments for a living.

Spot on. If you plan to fish tournaments for a living, you should not need the money to live on.

Some places always hold bass. Pads are one of them. I'm not talking about little dollar pads. I want dark green pads, the kind you can find somewhere in most every lake. You can fish pads a number of different ways. You can worm them and spend all day with your worm hung in the "V" slot. You can frog them and lose more fish than you land. Or, you can use a spinnerbait. If all you do is fish the edge, you are missing most of the fish. What you want is to throw back in the pads and work the spinnerbait slowly through the gaps and around the inner edges. If you stay with this tactic, your fish will be heavier than your fellow anglers. To be successful, you must learn to be an accurate caster. This is no place for finesse tackle. It's hand to hand combat. To win tournaments in Florida you need at least one kicker bass. I know of no better way to get one. Don't be afraid to do this in the middle of the day. Overhead sun makes pad fishing better.

On Monday, Harris Chain water was 84 degrees with air temps in the low 90s. Can't wait for some cooler air.... ?

Another braid vs. mono/flouro thread? Why not? ? I don't know what braid everyone else is using, but braid wraps around my rod tip, backlashes are more numerous and much harder to pick out. I end up cussing it all day. When flouro first came out it was stiff and coiled like a snake, so I went back to mono. Recently, there has been a great improvement in fluorocarbon fishing line. My Seaguar line is a pleasure to fish with. I get more bites. I don't need a leader and stretch is not an issue.

Mono stretches. Sometimes that's an advantage. With today's Fluorocarbon line, there is no need to use cable for fishing line and tie on a leader. As you discovered, all this does is add another knot to break. The price of braid and fluoro are compatible. In my opinion, 100% flouro is a much better choice. Other's may disagree.

Why don't you ditch the braid and just use the mono? I don't see the advantage?

The Mojo rig is deadly. I won a bunch of tournaments with that rig. For those who don't know, it's a finesse Carolina rig. I use a spinning rod and 8 pound mono. Works great in tough clear water situations. Try a 4" lizard on a Mojo and see what happens. ?

A Carolina rig works best on hard bottom. Hard bottom lakes are somewhat rare in Florida. I want the weight to tell me what the bottom is composed of. For that reason, I tend to use heavier 1 oz. weights. You can cover a lot of ground with these baits. What you are looking for are rock piles, bottom debris and shell beds. If the bottom has short grass, I use a Mojo rig. I like egg sinkers because they bump along and roll over rocks. I use a bead and a rattle to keep the weight from damaging the knot. My mono leaders are normally 18" to 24" in length. One of the best Carolina Rig baits is a Zoom Finesse worm. I have used lizards, craws and full size worms. It is common for a bass to have the bait and you don't know it. If you feel anything strange, set the hook. Hope that helps.

Back when I fished tournaments, I kept a special stash of Rattle Traps. I still have a few of them. Not all visually identical lures catch fish the same way. These special traps were the ones that caught more fish. Many of them were so beat up the finish was worn off and all that was left was white plastic. All I did was change the hooks. I could fish some new lures and nothing. I would tie on one of my stash Traps and a fish would come in the boat. I attributed this to the sound made by the internal BBs. Sometimes the glue would hold some in place and they would make a different sound than the rest. I left it up to the fish to tell me which one worked better. A Rattle Trap with no sound? That's like a Ferrari with no engine. That said, there are times when fish want a different presentation. If you suspect that's the case, I wouldn't fish a lipless crankbait, I would go to a spinner or blade bait. The effectiveness of a rattling lure has a lot to do with the clarity of the water. The clearer the water, the less noise you need to make.

I recently purchased a Chronarch MGL and Shimano Zodias rod from Tackle Warehouse. They had what I wanted and it came within a week. Previously, my limit for a bass rod was about $150 and a reel about the same. I decided to treat myself to an early Christmas present. I use this outfit strictly for worm fishing. This rod is 6' 10" in Medium Heavy. I loaded the reel with 15 pound fluorocarbon line. To say this rod is sensitive in an understatement. I feel things that I never could before. When my first fish pecked the worm, there was no question about it. The reel casts beautifully without making weird noises. You can backlash it if you really try, but anyone who wants to learn to cast won't have problems. Go for it!

Here in Central Florida, what we call Fall comes in two parts. September and October are mostly an extension of Summer. It's the rainy season and the lakes are high. This puts the fish deep into cover making flipping productive. Some of the biggest bass I have caught have been caught flipping in late August and September. As soon as the first significant cool front comes through, everything changes. Bait fish school up and bass start to feed more actively. This is spinnerbait and rattle trap time. This continues until early December when there is a pause just before the spawn. The timing may be different, but your patterns should be similar.

Two stroke outboard engines worked for over 100 years. Mercury is not going anywhere and service is easy to find. However, the advantages of a four stroke outboard are many. If you plan to keep the engine for a long time, you may want to step up to a new four stroke. Fuel economy is better, they run quieter, they come with a warranty, they idle all day without hesitation, no need to add oil to the gas and they don't smoke or pollute the water. The difference is amazing.

Anyone remember the Ambassador 2500C? When those reels came out in the seventies we thought they were great. After a few big Florida bass those nylon gears would strip like butter. They probably would have held up longer if we didn't string them with 20 pound mono and hammer the drags down. ?

Nice! If you caught a white Marlin too you would have had an offshore Grand Slam.

Not necessarily. Here's a big game fish I caught on 8 pound mono with an Ambassador 6500C. I was a lot younger then.

Amen brother! The wire has a significant effect on the action and vibration of a spinnerbait. The thinner the wire the more you get. This also means you will be buying more spinnner baits. Why is it that someone would invest hundreds of dollars in rods and reels and thousands of dollars in a boat and worry about a few dollars more for a spinnerbait? The spinnerbaits I use cost about $8-$10 each. I could go to Walmart and buy some for less than $5 that would catch some fish. I don't want "some fish", I want them all.

I believe the Calcutta was the best bass reel ever made. Simple, light and tough. All these people that think they need a computer to keep from backlashing should learn how to cast. (just kidding) ?

Most of my reels are low profile. I have one old Calcutta 250 that I use for spinnerbaits. It's a workhorse. I find most current reels are too fast for spinnerbait fishing. I just purchased a Shimano Chronarch MGL. I like it, but it's seems too small for my hands.