Captain Phil

Slow down. Go early, stay late.

Hang in there. Here in Florida, summer is the worst time of the year for bass fishing. It's a good time to experiment with new places and techniques. Try new water. The best fishing is sometimes where you don't suspect.

I have been bass fishing for over 60 years. There is not much in this sport that I haven't seen or experienced. I want young anglers to know that no one catches bass on every trip. Even the most seasoned, experienced, and Yes, famous fisherman of all time struggle on occasion. All my life I had the same standard of bass fishing success. If I catch at least one bass each time I go out, I feel good about that trip. It doesn't even have to be a keeper. Bass fishing is challenging. That's what makes it fun.

The lighter the line, the more bites you will get. I use 8 pound Maxima mono on my spinning outfits. It's strong than it looks.

Me too...

Smithwick did not invent the top water lure with spinners on both ends, they perfected it. There are some adjustments and minor tweaks you can make to this lure that make it more effective. First, change the hooks. I remove the stock hooks and replace them with #6 Gamakatsu trebles. If you change the back hook to a #4, the lure will sit in the water nose up changing the action. Some people put split rings on the hooks. I don't because it sometimes causes the hooks to tangle. I use 20 pound mono with this lure. You can bend the blades slightly to make the lure stay in one place longer or retrieve faster. My favorite color is chrome with an orange belly. My second favorite is the old spotted ape color which is difficult to find these days. It's green with black spots on the belly. All colors catch fish. There is no way to fish these lures that will not work. The way that works best for me is to throw the lure into pockets deep in cover and give it 2-3 hard jerks and let it sit for at least 10 seconds, then repeat the process. While it's sitting, watch carefully as a bass often shows itself before it hits. This lure makes big bass mad as heck. I think it triggers a territory reflex in fish.

I no longer fish tournaments. When I did, I knew exactly where and how I was going to fish. if you are going to win tournaments not just participate, this is what you must do. The question is "How do you know where and how to fish?" The answer is to prefish until you know. Years ago, I used to fish where I saw other anglers fishing. I fished the same community holes time after time. A friend said I should find my own fish. I decided that I was going to fish the entire lake. I started at a point in Lake Harris and fished in one direction. The next day, I started where I quit the previous day and continued. It took me nearly all summer to fish the entire lake. Along the way I found fish that no one else knew about. If you fish the same spots all the time, you will never find anything new. You will continue to catch the same beat up fish everyone else is catching.

Fishing the everglades in the summer is better at night. It's not for the careless or timid. Leave the ramp at midnight and fish until dawn. Don't fish alone.

The Smithwick Devil's horse is beyond a doubt the greatest top water bass bait ever made. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been won in tournaments on this lure. It will out fish all the frogs, poppers and buzz baits put together. Most people don't fish this lure close enough to cover. It works best when thrown deep into cover. This requires precise castings skill and guts. If you can't catch fish on this lure, you should consider taking up archery. (joke) ?

Thirty years ago the State stocked the Harris Chain with grass carp in an attempt to control hydrilla. Some of these carp grew to be huge, many reaching 40 pounds or more. As often happens in these attempts, it turned into a disaster. In Lake Yale they double stocked the lake due to a miscalculation. After the carp finished off the hydrilla, they started eating everything else that grew in the lake including reeds and cattails. The joke was they would follow lakefront home owners down the shoreline as they cut their grass. Some locals used corn to bait these fish. At the time, I ran some guide trips with bow fisherman targeting these fish. It got so bad they had to construct plastic barriers around the grass beds. The lake was in danger of total collapse, so they started to net the carp out of the lake with air boats at night. They eventually removed most of the carp or they died off, as I haven't seen one in a while. The lake grass has returned and the fishing improved. I don't know where the bow fisherman moved to. ?

Seeing gar fish is not necessarily a sign of poor water quality. It is true that gars and bowfin (mudfish) can live in water with low oxygen levels. It takes more than gar fish to convince me a spot is not fit for bass. Gars are part of the ecosystem. They feed on similar food as bass. Here in Central Florida in the spring of the year, it is common to observe large female gar fish in the shallows. Spawning female gar fish can be surrounded by scores of smaller male gars. I have had clients in my boat who want to move because they believe gars and bass can not coexist. Those folks are always surprised when we start catching bass in that spot. What worries me more is when I don't see any signs of life in the water.

I haven't done much smallmouth fishing, but I assume a bass is a bass. Fishing artificials vs. live bait are two different approaches. When fishing artificial lures, you are hunting fish. When fishing live bait, you are baiting fish to come to you. I have done both. I am not of the opinion that just anyone can hang out a live bait and catch all the fish they want. It takes skill to consistently catch bass however you do it. Anyone who believes live bait out fishes artificial lures 10 to 1 must not be very good at lure fishing. When you fish artificial lures, you have hundreds if not thousands of options. There are not many options on how to fish a bucket of live bait. I use live bait when I am specifically targeting large fish. A 10 inch shiner is not going to catch many dinks. I fish artificials 99% of the time. I don't belittle live bait fisherman. Both methods have their place.

Rattle Trap

Here in Florida we have dense topped out hydrilla beds normally no deeper than six feet. In the summer heat, fishing these beds can be the only way to catch quality bass. I flip these beds with a pegged 3/4 oz. bullet weight and a worm. I coat the bait with attractant to make it slippery. I don't like to use a weight heavier than 1 oz. because I get less strikes. I do not use braid for this fishing. I use 25 pound Trilene Big game mono because the surface of braid is rough which impedes the fall of the bait. The fall is what triggers a strike when flipping. What you should do is target small holes in the grass. You may need to shake the lure slightly to get it to fall through. Let the lure fall under it's own weight. When it hits the bottom, always check the lure to see if a bass has it in it's mouth. Do not fail to do this every time. A bass can inhale your lure and you won't know it until it's too late. I have caught some huge bass this way. It's one of my favorite ways to fish Lake Toho.

Many years ago, I nearly won a major national tournament fishing around Uncle Joes. It was back in the seventies and I was just starting to fish tournaments seriously. The tournament was out of Taylor Creek in March. I made the run to Uncle Joes every day of the tournament. It was a very windy tournament and I had to run down the west side of the lake until I could get to the top of the rim ditch at Moore Haven. I beat my fish up in practice or I would have won easily. I ended up getting a nice check. As I remember Johnny Adams won fishing out of the J&S canal. Lots of people ignore the rim ditch and the canals around Okeechobee. This is a mistake. The bottom contains all types of structure, drop offs and ledges. When the wind blows, the water flows in and out of the cuts turning on the fish. Back then, few people fished there. I'm pretty sure the secret is out by now.

Don't be afraid to fish the rim canal. It's especially good around Uncle Joe's.

I was still living in South Florida when Hurricane Andrew went through in 1992. It devastated large parts of South Miami and Homestead. There were a number of zoos and animals attractions that were affected. My understanding was many of these animals escaped and migrated to the everglades. South Florida is full of exotic species. My son lives in Weston, a suburb west of Ft. Lauderdale. His neighborhood has many large iguana lizards living in backyards. Some of these lizards can reach 6 feet long. When a cold snap comes, the low temps stun them and they fall out of trees. They also have poisonous cane toads that can kill a dog if the dog bites them. You never know what you are going to catch when you fish down there. It may be a snook, a bass, an oscar, a peacock bass, a jack crevalle or a tarpon. The people are as diverse as the animals. One of my clients was a prince from a foreign country that had over 80 brothers and sisters. It's an interesting place that never fails to surprise. We moved to a quieter place in 1996.

Some of the worst summer afternoon storms I have ever been out in were on Lake Okeechobee. Some of them had dangerous waterspouts. It's best to avoid being on the water during one of these storms. They start around 2-3 PM and can last for a few hours. If you run into a canal for protection, you risk being trapped by a wild blown dam of water hyacinths. These storms are normally over by 6 PM and the temperature drops significantly. The fishing after one of these storms can be outrageous. Be careful. The key to finding fish on Lake Okeechobee has always been in finding good water quality.

I may be an outlier on this issue, but I would not buy another jackplate. I have been buying boats since the sixties. I've had every bass boat from a Terry Bass to a Gambler. I even had a custom Storm boat commissioned once that was on the cover of a national magazine. A few of my boats had a jackplate. Every boat has a motor height where the boat performs best. From my experience, there is little to be gained from moving the motor up and down while under way. I once thought having a jackplate would be helpful in shallow water. All it did was make the boat harder to plane. I once thought having a jackplate would make the boat go faster. It didn't help that much. When it breaks and it will, you are in for another big repair bill. If you are in the racing business, you may want a jackplate. For fishing, it adds another complication that you don't need. You may have to experiment with the motor height to find the right height for your boat the way you want it to perform. Once you do, leave it there and go fishing.

There are actually more big snakes in Florida than most people know of. Here in Central Florida, we don't have pythons (yet). It gets colder here than in South Florida, so maybe they will stay down there? What we do have are pet snakes that escape or are released intentionally. Someone buys a boa at a pet store as a pet. What are you going to do with that snake when it's ten feet long? A few years ago, two idiots in Orlando left a baby alone with a large pet snake and the baby was killed. About fifteen years ago my wife saw a large snake crawling across the driveway leading to our house. The snake was longer than the driveway was wide. I showed her some pictures and she identified the snake as a green tree boa. Thank God we haven't seen it since.

Your age and physical condition will also affect your decision. Even when I was young, I found kayak fishing tough on my back. Getting in and out of a kayak is not always easy. If you fall out of a kayak, are you able to swim to shore? You can fall out of a boat too, but it's not as likely. Kayak fishing is a great way to enjoy the sport on a budget. It also allows you to fish places where a big boat can't go. If you buy a boat you can fish with a buddy or a family member. In either case, the bass don't care.

I am not a fan of braid. I only use it for frog fishing. I do find braid backlashes easier to untangle than mono. Braid seems to require more thumb pressure on the cast than mono. If you attempt to make a long cast with braid and don't thumb the spool correctly, you will have one heck of a mess. If you load the line under pressure, you can avoid most of these issues.

Everything eventually gets sold. When you buy a boat or make an investment into it, you should consider how your decisions affect it's resale value. This also applies to homes and cars.

In the heat of the day, try fishing on the bottom of the canal.

Live bait has it's place in bass fishing. Twenty years ago many of my inexperienced customers struggled to catch bass on artificials. Most of them preferred that I fished with them. I would cast a plastic worm into a likely spot and pull out a bass. Some could never duplicate the process. Customers are paying to catch fish not watch someone else catch them, so I always carried some live shiners. No one can catch bass where they aren't, so it took more than a live well full of shiners to be successful. A skilled angler fishing with artificial lures can catch more fish in a day than someone fishing with live bait. This is true because the artificial lure angler can cover more water. The problem with shiner fishing is bass often swallow the shiner. Shiner fishing kills too many fish. Those little farm raised shiners are worthless. The best shiners are native to the water where you are fishing. Back in the day, we used 9"-10" golden shiners under a balloon with 30 pound test. We didn't get many bites. The bites we did get were worth the wait.