Got up here last night to my wife's other Grandfathers house in Central FL. He lives on a private lake, and her uncle and I have been on/off the water all day. We started out this morning at 0600. The bite was a little slow. He picked one up in the first 30 minutes. After about another 30 min of nothing, I then picked up 3 in about 20 min using a humping toad. After that, nothing happened for the next 2 hours, so we headed in. We went back out around 1200 to see if we can get any fish to bite. Nothing for 2 hours. We then called it for the afternoon. After eating dinner around 1600, we decided to just give it another try. We headed out, and found the fish on the beds in the area we had scoped out earlier. Her uncle threw to an area that had some movement, and he ended up pulling a good 5lber out. We fished through the rest of te area, but the bedding fish were not having the bait, just swimming away. The time was creeping around 1830, and the sun was sinking in the horizon. Just as it was on the verge of becoming dark, the fish became alive. As we were swimming toads and EZs, the fish were coming out of the water and crushing the bait. In the next 30 minutes of fishing (before we couldn't see our hand in front of us), I pulled in another 4 fish. It was so dark, I really couldn't see the toad swimming. I could only cast in a general area, and listen to the bait swim along the surface. Once I would hear the splash of the strike, count to 2, then set the hook for the fish. It was a pretty decent day of fishing, as we did it all from a 10 foot Gheenoe.

Love private waters fishing!  Your story illustrates perfectly how areas that appear devoid of fish can be deceiving!  Take some pics if you go out again! 

I also love private lakes and Florida has more than one could count.  Good fishin', Gambler!

This morning was slow. No bites. Went out again around 1300, caught 3, but lost 1. We are gonna try tonight again. My wifes other uncle came, brought his boat. Can we say challenge?

In the words of the tap dancing teacher on The Cosby Show, "CHALLENGE!"

sounds fun, how did all your Abu Garcias hold up throughout the day? lol

sounds fun, how did all your Abu Garcias hold up throughout the day? lol

Haha.

Well, today we only caught 3. Had alot of bites, but could only hook 3. It seemed as if today they were kind of grabbing them and swimming, but just not engulfing them. Caught 2 on hollow frogs, and it was fun watching them swim to them in that shallow water. They came up to it and like Jaws, just poked their heads out and ate them ever so gently. The other 1 was caught on a lizard by me. Overall for the weekend it was pretty good fishing considering the warm winter was messing with the fish. Saw plenty of beds. Gonna toss a green worm from the bank later before we head back south. I caught 3 yesterday afternoon from the bank, gonna see what will happen later.