Captain Phil

Most bass clubs are very competitive. To get the most out of joining a bass club, you must go about it the right way. Keep a low profile. Go as a non boater at first and leave your ego at home. Club tournaments give you a chance to see what others are doing. Some members will be better than you, some will be worse. If someone takes you to a "hot spot" don't go back later and camp on it and don't tell your friends. If you get that reputation, no one will want to fish with you. Don't be discouraged if you aren't the most popular person in the club. Let your fish do the talking. Once you gain respect, everyone will want to be your friend.

My wife and I have lived in Florida all our lives. We live about 30 miles northwest of Orlando. Summer mornings are tolerable. Unless it's cloudy, by 9 or 10 AM, it starts getting hot and we head back to the marina. You don't want to be out in the heat of the day. Summer afternoons bring thunderstorms. This cools things off, but it can be dangerous. If the fireworks are over by 6 PM, you can sneak back out for the evening bite. Some of the best fishing in Florida happens then. I have been on the lake after a Florida thunderstorm when it seemed every bass in the lake was committing suicide. I have been out when I shouldn't have been too. Here's a bass I caught this morning.

One of the things that makes me sad about today's world is the fear many parents have of older men. My grandfather loved kids. When he retired, there would always be a bunch of kids around his house. He told them stories, bought them candy and treated them as his own. He was a school crossing guard too. The kids all knew him. It was the saddest day of his life when he was forced to quit the crossing guard job when he turned 70. Today, if I walk into a grocery store and see a small kid looking at me, I want to say something to the child. If I do, the Mom looks at me like I'm a serial killer. It's so sad what has happened to our society.

The mosquitoes were terrible. We tried many different methods of combating them. We made hats out of screen material in an attempt to keep them off our faces. All that did was tick them off. We would burn PIC mosquito repellent coils all around the boat. The best was Cutter orange spray. If you sprayed yourself every 30 minutes it was tolerable. In my twenties I would often fish the Everglades by myself at night. I scared myself more than a few times. Funny what you will do to catch fish...

I grew up in a very rough part of Miami. My mother was a single Mom. She married when I was three. My stepfather adopted me and changed my last name to his. My parents loved me and I had a normal childhood. I learned to fish from my grandfather when I was 12. We would sit on a canal bank and fish with a cane pole. When I was about 13, I started fishing the neighborhood canals and rock pits. I met other boys and we started riding our bikes around town looking for fishing spots. My stepfather wasn't a fisherman. My parents knew a family from church that had two small kids and I would baby sit for them. Their father was a Chief at the Naval Base and a big time bass fisherman. My parents asked him to take me fishing. His kids weren't old enough to fish, so he took me often. Back then, I thought he was the greatest bass fisherman in the world. While other kids in my neighborhood were getting in trouble, I was fishing. If you see a kid walking down the street carrying a fishing pole, that was me sixty years ago. Kids need heroes. You don't have to be a great fisherman to be a hero to your kids. If you don't have time to invest in your kids, find someone who does. My step father never took me fishing. He cared enough to find someone who would.

Back then, we did a test to see if there was a difference in lure colors. We would fish a white jitterbug for an hour, then a black one. The black jitterbug always out fished the white one. Black worms and spinnerbaits also work better at night. I assume it's easier for a fish to see black at night? As you might expect, we didn't catch many small fish with a Musky Jitterbug. The fish we did catch were all over five pounds. The man I fished with threw that lure with a Pflueger Supreme and line that looked like cable.

Sixty years ago, I used to night fish in the summer with one of my father's friends. He had a 12 foot aluminum boat and we would take turns rowing. This was before trolling motors. We fished in the Everglades with black Musky Jitterbugs. I can still remember the sound of that lure coming across the water. I still have one in my lure collection.

One of the best bass reels ever made. The later ones were crap. Hang onto yours.

If you are experiencing problems with your line "digging In", you are not putting enough pressure on your line when you spool it on.

These days I do not recommend fishing for large offshore game fish with ultralight tackle. By the time you get the fish to the boat, the poor fish is near death from exhaustion. It may not be unable to escape from predators like large sharks.

There are numerous advantages to closing the bail by hand. The most obvious one is to prevent loops from being reeled onto the spool. It only takes a few seconds to straight out a loop. It could take a long time to untangle a huge ball of line or respool completely. The second advantage is it slows you down allowing a little extra time for the lure to fall vertically. If you cast a sinking lure and flip the bail over too fast, your lure will fall toward you. Manually closing the bail is also easier on the reel itself. Back in the day I used to carry extra bail springs. This may not be a problem today as I haven't had one break in years.

Back in the early nineties a friend and I went to Guatemala on a three day fishing trip. Sailfish fishing at the time was incredible. Killing a sailfish was strictly forbidden. An armed military gun boat checked you in and out of the harbor each day. There were so many sailfish that it was like fishing for schooling bass. They would troll teasers with no hooks to raise fish. With a fish at the back of the boat, you could choose which rod and bait to use. We caught over 60 fish in all. The last day we grew bored, so we started catching them with light tackle. I had brought an Ambassador 5500C loaded with eight pound mono. After two hours, I landed this fish, took this photo and released it. Much of the fight was recorded with a VCR camera. This fish was estimated to weigh around 120 pounds. I checked with the IGFA and it would have been a world record at the time. Lots of crazy things happened on that trip....

I'm not taking sides. However, there are very few truly new bass lures. If you look through an antique lure catalog you can see this is true. Lure makers have been copying each other for years. You can't patent a lure that is a copy of something in nature like a worm or a crawfish. There's nothing unique about a spinner, a blade or a bucktail. As long as anglers continue to buy cheap knockoffs, they will still be sold.

Fish mortality is a big problem in Florida during the summer months. Surface water temps are in the nineties and the mid day sun is relentless. Live wells cook more bass than anglers. After a tournament, our marinas were full of floating dead fish upsetting anglers and shoreline observers. As stated, most summer bass tournaments in Florida have had their hours cut back. My personal opinion is all bass tournaments should go to a three fish 15" limit. There would be less fish riding around in live wells. It would also concentrate more effort on catching big fish rather than numbers. To me, it's more significant to catch one 4 pounder than 5 dinks. So far, the best option I have seen is to go to a weigh, photo and release format.

If you do these two things, you will never have line twist on a spinning reel. #1 Install the line on your reel the right direction. #2 Never flip the bail over by turning the reel handle. Train yourself to flip the bail by hand to make sure you don't have a loop before you cast.

I've always been pleased with Lowrance products. I bought a Hummingbird depth finder once. It was a piece of crap. The screen resolution was terrible, the unit kept powering on and off and the documentation was unintelligible.

Bingo! I fished South Florida for many years. Night fishing in the summer is way more effective. The best night fishing is from 12 midnight until dawn. By 9 AM, you may as well go home. My favorite night lure was a 9" black worm. You don't have to worry about hangups or alligators. Big spinner baits work as well. The biggest problem is mosquitoes. If you coat yourself with orange label Cutter every 15 minutes, they aren't too bad. You do what you have to do. Windy nights are better. No way would I ever fish on the bank in the Everglades at night!!! You may find yourself in the middle of an Animal Kingdom episode. ?

Driving by the Hickory Point Park ramp two days ago, the marque temp sign at front read 110 degrees. The outside temp in my car read 107. Surface water temps are in the nineties. Florida normally has afternoon thunderstorms that cool things off. Not his year. The only fishing I'm doing these days is on my computer.

Aquatic weed spraying does not kill fish. As others have stated, it relocates them. If your house was bombed and your food was removed, would you hang around? :>)

I fished in Lac Seul Canada for a number of years. My friends were all Walleye fisherman. They would sit in the back of the boat trolling with spinners and minnows. Walleyes fight like wet towels, so they didn't interest me. I would sit in the front of the boat casting plugs and spinnerbaits. They kidded me and called me "The man of a thousands casts." Every day at lunch time, we would have shore lunch and cook the walleyes they caught. Walleyes are great eating. I wasn't fishing for food. One day I hung what I thought was a pike on a big Cisco Kid plug. It turned out to be a 10 pound Walleye. That ended their kidding. I caught come some huge pike too. I mounted one that weighed 25 pounds. I wouldn't kill a fish like that today.

I have always had a soft spot for anglers from Minnesota. They told me bass in Minnesota are considered trash fish by some anglers, most fish for trout or other species of fish. This was twenty years ago, so things may have changed. The angler below booked me one winter day. We fished Haines Creek and the fish were biting. I gave him my best lure and he was having a ball. He told me his goal was to catch a big Florida bass. Not long afterward he landed this fish. I don't remember his name, but it was great to see him catch that fish.

He was one of the best. Tournament fishing is not for everyone. Most anglers don't know how their fishing compares to others unless they fish competitively. The majority don't care, they just want to have fun and catch a few fish. The sport owes a lot to tournaments. If it weren't for them we would all still be fishing with linen line and Bass Orenos. Everything from Bass Boats to laser sharpened hooks came from competitive fishing. Whatever makes the sport better, I'm for it.

Excellent advice. I agree 100%. We had a local man that fished our tournaments for years. He always fished the gator hole in Lake Eustis. He was also a chain smoker. His technique was always the same. He would anchor his boat , cast out a Zoom Mag II worm, put his rod down and light up a cigarette. He never moved the worm until he finished his smoke. He brought more 10 pound bass to the scales than anyone else. You could always count on him catching a huge bass. I told a friend that I was going to try this for myself. He told me my head would explode if I fished that slow. :>) There is a difference between searching for fish and catching fish. Searching requires covering water. Catching requires working the fish you found.

It's worth noting why this particular lure may have been so effective for Charlie. Top water lures attract large fish. This lure is about 4 inches long. Slim lures attract more bites. The chrome reflective finish makes it almost invisible to a fish. The slim orange belly stripe reflecting off the chrome looks like a native golden shiner, a major bass forage in Florida. Since the fish can't actually see the lure, it's more of a finesse bait. The dual props are like two tiny torpedo lures in tandem. I don't know why, but Florida bass seem to want to kill this lure. Many of the strikes are fierce attacks. Finally, Charlie knew where to throw this lure and could consistently deliver the lure where he needed to. He fished this lure with heavy line and was not concerned with hang ups. When you are fishing money tournaments, you only need five bites to get paid. You want those bites to be as large as possible. A bag anchored by two eight pounders will do the job.

Watermelon red is a killer color for any soft plastic lure.