I was bass fishing with a rattletrap, and caught this 5.5 pound, 18.5 inch tilapia.

First one Ive ever caught on a lure.

Wow! I’ve seen some of their beds on Okeechobee that look like dinner tables and I’ve seen some bigguns in Headwaters but never caught one.  

My understanding is they rarely bite any kind of artificial bait, but he clobbered the rattletrap about 8 feet from shore…

Nice catch!

10 hours ago, N Florida Mike said:

I was bass fishing with a rattletrap, and caught this 5.5 pound, 18.5 inch tilapia.

First one Ive ever caught on a lure.

 

Nice one, Mike! I keep telling y'all they will strike lures hah. My best year I culled over 100 of them all caught on artificials. Lipless is far and away my best presentation for them, especially yo-yo'd when they're schooling. Jerkbait is very effective as well, but I've caught them on spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, Texas-rigs, underspins, etc.

 

How was the fight? The little ones are hit or miss on if they really dig and use those flat sides or if they come in like a dead weight, but the bigger ones have some real fight in them and will make you think you have a trophy bass on for a minute.

 

Make sure you submit it to FWC's BigCatch program, 5lbs is the minimum weight to qualify.

Aaron, I rarely fish with those baits, so that explains not catching them.

He hit violently and like you said, I thought at first it was the bass I was after. After a brief struggle, I got him to the bank. But it wasn’t far to start with.

Thanks for mentioning the trophy catch program.- but I didn’t think of it and let the fish go without a picture of the measurement or weight !😕

6 hours ago, N Florida Mike said:

Aaron, I rarely fish with those baits, so that explains not catching them.

He hit violently and like you said, I thought at first it was the bass I was after. After a brief struggle, I got him to the bank. But it wasn’t far to start with.

Thanks for mentioning the trophy catch program.- but I didn’t think of it and let the fish go without a picture of the measurement or weight !😕

 

For their BigCatch program, I'm not sure if they require a scale pic or if it's just honor system. TrophyCatch program for bass they are definitely strict on the scale photo requirements as there are prizes attached.

I’ll try it! Thanks.

@N Florida Mike nice fish

1 hour ago, N Florida Mike said:

I’ll try it! Thanks.

 

Hope it goes through! The BigCatch program is just for fun but it's a super cool program. I found out the hard way how strict they are about TrophyCatch when my first DD bass was disqualified for not having the entire fish visible in the scale pic, despite providing photographs of length and girth measurements. Still got BigCatch on that one, though, and lesson learned!

I started to submit a fish for Trophy catch (an 8 pound 1 oz. Fish).

Then I realized my freshwater license was expired! Part of the submission requirements state that you have to have a valid license to submit a fish! 
So I immediately went and got my license renewed, but didn’t feel right about it, so I never submitted the fish…🙁

I tried to submit the tilapia, but it says they are upgrading the site at the moment…

Beauty for sure Mike!