Zcoker

It just competition, just like any other form of competition. They'll be talk jocks, wanna bees, banter, all kinds of things going on. Just have to stay focused, streamlined, be cool and collective. Smile hard, fish hard, and next time do what you gotta do to win, that's all.

Well, since otters are in the same family as badges, then i guess we got them as well, one big happy family lol

Everglades in action. These two fish were caught 10 minutes apart in the exact same spot with the exact same bait. Who said big bass are solitary creatures lol I actually thought it was the same fish but it wasn't. Sure does help make those heavy bags!

I see a lot of deer, just a different species, south Florida style, tons of them!

I'm sure it's different. The everglades in Florida is very diverse. It can support virtually any form of life, including our unwelcomed friends like pythons. In and of itself, it's a living organism. It's fragile as well. Florida has wiped out many acres of it due to agriculture and over development. Not to mention the controlled water flow, hundreds of mile of manmade canals. At one time Lake Okeechobee (which is part of the everglades) naturally drained south. Now the water is channeled off to holding areas to remove the phosphorus. There's many systems in place to improve the quality, which I'm starting to see more and more. Unless you're out there all the time, it's hard to know what's really going on. One thing that they do that I hate is spray, or nuke, as we call it. They kill off vegetation along with just about everything else. Once a lake or area gets nuked, it takes a while for it to come back to the way it was before. All in all, there's so many miles and miles of unfished areas that are still pristine and untouched, thank goodness!

You'd love it! The bass are wild, vicious, and you just never know when that 10 pounder gonna hit! It's a ever changing world, like a living organism in itself. One day everything can be a certain way and then, the next day, completely different. I fish the glades day and night, and each time has it's own special offerings. Nighttime is humbling, to say the least. The everglades is just so different, unique, and so very rewarding when it comes to bass fishing!

Hit about 25lb's just the other day with two of them coming in at just over 15lbs! Average is anywhere from 20-25lbs. I've done 35lbs on a few occasions. Everglades never disappoints!

I just make my own and add various blade configurations to tune them. The blades have much to do with how the bait acts on top of the water. Just like spinnerbaits do underwater, the blades on a buzzbait dictate motion, speed, sound, etc. The spinnerbait below moves very slowly and the blades make a unique gargling sound by counteracting each other. The difference in the hits are amazing! Little changes make a major difference on how the fish react!

I've been getting some nice 8 and 9 pounders on swimbaits out in the everglades. I like the slow sinking 6" Trace baits in bluegill or wild shiner, which is matching the hatch where I fish. I don't use them often but when I'm after big fish, or if the conditions warrant, they are the sure thing. I target edges, casting strait at heavy cover and then slowly retrieving back to the kayak. Sometimes the wake that follows the bait is unbelievable, like heart pounding, like a big submarine in tow! So I slow it down a wee bit, just a bit to let it sink a bit more and then BOOM! She hits with pure fury! I pull back with a firm sweeping motion. My setup is a Daiwa Tatula 7.6 M/H casting rod with a 20lb copolymer line. All my other rods have 50-65lb strait braid but for the swimbaits I like the mono. I find the added stretch just perfect to keep the those big girls pinned--not too much stretch but just enough! With braid I've had them come unpinned. I usually fish the swimbaits in the daytime but I've caught some giants at night. Night requires a known area to avoid snags and so forth. My tactics at night are the same as the daytime. Happy hunting!

Yea, man, wife & I were all fired up and ready to go, even had lures lined of from Jansen Tackle down there. Was all ready to go, surf rods, hotel, and then boom--covid hit. Just haven't booked since. I'll get around to it someday! June is supposedly wicked crazy down there, Roosters all over the surf, which is what I wanted to hit into.

I've been to most every state in this country, from northern Mass to New Mexico, Texas, all through the wild west, the Rockies, the Dakotas, the Ozarks...the Keys. Been to Costa Rica many times, one of my favorite places out of country, both on the Pacific side and the Caribbean side. I had planned a Cabo trip for roosters but it got snuffed when Covid hit. Even with all the moving around, it's hard to beat SE Florida! The saltwater fishing down here is utterly amazing! We have three very popular migrations each year off our local beaches: the glass minnow run, the mullet run, and the annual blacktip migration. During these runs the surf fishing is dream-like. Find another place in the world to cast off a public beach and hook into 150lb trophy tarpon, just a few yards off the sand, sometimes one right after the other! The shark migration is my calling because I get those off topwater lures, off the local beaches, all on a surf rod. They hit like atomic bombs and blast out of the ocean like fireballs. Their smoking runs can pull a minimum of 400 yards before they become manageable. Talk about a nerve wracking fight! Hard to beat that kinda fishing, in my book, bass fishing included. The everglades is by far the most exciting for bass fishing. It's never ending and never disappoints. The sheer vastness of it offers a whole new world every trip, which is why it's so hard for me to go anywhere else! Having ALL these fantastically wonderful fishing opportunities so close makes it very very very hard to go anywhere else!!

Kinda reminds me of the old days with tarpon fishing. A catch wasn't a catch unless it was strung up dead for a photo shoot. They killed thousands! Every tarpon met it's fate hanging from a post. Presidents fished for them. Anybody with any clout and prestige fished for them. Tournaments all the time. Hotels, clubs, and marinas built to host the anglers. It was a rich man's sport. It was defiantly a driven sport. Nowadays, there are strict rules protecting tarpon. Bass fishing was much the same years ago, and it has been a long, long journey into this new age, just like for the tarpon. Hopefully it'll all work out.

I think with Josh the fish are coming up from 80 or so feet and get the bends, so to speak, and never make it. I don't know exactly what the term is. I hear you, though, not a pretty picture seeing some of these big breeder fish wedged into some of these smallish tanks. Social media has given plenty of folks good reason to do what they do, I reckon.

Talk about "mega bags", Butch Brown did a YouTube vid promoting Huddleston baits. In it, he pulled out five fish from his live-well that weighed in at over 65lbs! The kicker fish was over 18lbs. Now, I'm quite sure that this mega catch/bag didn't happen immediately. Probably took the entire day. Yet all the fish appeared to swim off strongly. So maybe there's a right way to keep fish fresh and lively with the least amount of harm. I've even heard of additives being added to live-wells to keep things fresh. I don't use a live-well, so wouldn't know. All I know is the fish appeared spunky and ready to blast off!

Yep, used to do the same until I tried the plastic earring holder. My wife asked me to remove one that was stuck on her earring and when I did, I was like, man, these would be perfect to hold a trailer hook! lol I didn’t particularly like the tubing or the plastic cutout or other various hacks like stripping electrical wire and using the hollow plastic tube. The fit and finish of the earring holder is perfect! I’ve never had one fail, either. Plus they’re easy to change in the heat of battle. I get hundreds of them for a few bucks.

I totally agree. Free swinging is the way to go. My method of securing them, lady’s earring holders lol

Lol there's some bigguns down her in south Florida! Lotta opinions out there with trailer hooks. Gotta use what you have confidence in. In my case, I have high confidence in trailer hooks, especially fishing down here in the everglades. I've lost a number of nice fish without using a trailer hook, fish so big that the big open whites of their mouths are still visually as plain as day. That doesn't happen so much anymore, hardly at all, as a matter of fact. And the only thing attributed to that (for me) is the addition of a trailer hook on those baits mentioned here. Now, as far as free swinging goes, that may have something to do with holding the fish, possibly. Free swinging may be a good thing when a bass comes out of the water widely. Something rigid may give the fish more leverage to toss the bait. All I can say is that free swinging trailer hooks seem to hold the fish much much better than the standard rigid hooks. When I net these fish and go to remove the hook, it's most always the trailer that has them pinned.

Doesn't take forever, like under a minute. I measure so many fish that it's almost ridiculous. What I do is lay the fish on the board and then hold my hand on it to calm it down, which happens very quickly. When first on the board, the back of the tail is usually curling upwards and the body is taut. When that tail starts laying flat is a good indication that the fish is starting to relax. If the fish is big, I usually put her in the net (which is deep and big) and hang it over the side of my yak until I get situated. Once situated, I remove her and position the net vertically in front of the board, just in case she gets the urge. If you have a good system, the CPR process if very fast, very streamlined, and very efficient!

All my baits, spinnerbaits buzzbaits and chatterbaits get a 2/0 trialer hook. Most big girls that I bring in are hooked solid with the trailer...and only the trailer. Is why I never leave home without them!

There's an old sayin in the foodservice business....when in doubt, throw it out! I say the same thing for knots....when in doubt, re-tie!

Move around or just find another place with another bank. Fish don't stick around to any particular spot unless for good reason. The spot that you were fishing was obviously fishless. Things are always changing. Best advice that I can give you is to change just like the fish, or at least be willing to change. Moving around and hunting them down, ironically, I find the hunt just as exciting as catching the catch!

I totally agree. I was only bringing up the time quote because I was curious myself. Seems excessive, imho. 10 minutes is a long, long time! The shorter the time, the better, in my book. As for dive bombing these fish face first into the water, can't understand that one. I've followed some augments that have said the fish need the extra rush of water to get the gills going. They do the same thing to GT's, head first dive bombing them back into the ocean with the idea that a rush of water sets them off. This may be true for certain species, and may be why the practice has been carried over to other species, bass included. In any case, I see no reason why a fisherman cannot squat down and gently send a fish off. Seems simple enough to me. Now, as for handling a fish while in the water, maybe rocking it back and forth to get it energized, I don't necessarily agree with that one. Down here in the Florida everglades there's big hungry gators laying on the shallow bottom watching your every move!

Takes time for the water temps to catch up with a warm day. Bass still think it's freezing out lol

Take some time off. It can get old, sure it can. Only thing that keeps me going is tournaments or chasing trophy bass. Other than that, it can bog me down quickly. What I do to get out of my slumps is to switch back and forth from freshwater to saltwater, specifically to tag sharks for NOAA. The ocean is a whole different world and awakens some truly remarkable feelings. The wide open freshness of it is like a new beginning. On the flipside, I have those same sort of feelings when I switch back to bass fishing. The point is to get away from it for awhile, take a break like you would for anything else, a breather, so to speak, and then come back freshened up and ready to go!

Great article! I can relate very well to #3 'Chase another species'. We have our fall mullet run going on down here in south Florida with plenty of other species to chase!