Went out to a small Florida pond Sunday for a few hours. This place is small enough you can walk around the entire pond in 5 minutes. They do have these stupid size limitations which has turned this into a panfish only pond. The bass are all 12" and smaller. The limits are 8" minimum to keep a panfish, max 10 keepers, and limit 1 bass minimum 24". No limits on catfish, and the turtles are illegal to keep which makes fishing even tougher because they take the bait sometimes more often than anything else. In the years I have fished here, I have never heard or seen a bass pulled out over 14" at this pond which means they are all stunted.

I had my UL setup for bream sitting on the bottom with a piece of hot dog. Then I had the 2 bass setups, one trying a float 'N fly dropped 8 feet down which would be maybe 1-4 feet off the bottom at the deepest areas, I tossed it out 40 feet so the light wind and chop would move the bobber along the channel. Second I tried various dark jigs and senko worms which always produce well here.

The water temp was 44ºF when I got there around 2PM and was 41º when I left around 6PM.

First I tried off the dock along the channel bottom super slow retrieve for the black/blue jig. Hauled up dying/dead vegetation almost every retrieve so that stuff is sitting on the bottom, so usually the fish shouldn't be far away.

Finally after cast #20 I got a small 12 oz bass...

So I decided to run around the pond with my Strike King worm (watermelon/red flake) and see if I can get any reaction or feeding bites. I got up to the south end of the pond (dam at north end, feeder spring creek at south end) which has a lot of submerged stumps and got a few "grab and drops" but they were so subtle that if I had not seen the fish do it in the clear water, I would have thought it was a branch or vegetation. They would grab the last portion of the tail, move a foot or so then just stop, usually right up against a stump... they were not moving much and not eating much.

So I tried the jig again and caught a few more small ones but nothing over 18 oz. Went back to the dock and caught my one and only keeper fish, a 8" bluegill so I tossed him on ice.

Once the weather warms up and I catch more bass there, I may need to start keeping or killing some of the small bass when no one is around to help increase the size of the rest and to reduce the number of small bream here. During the warm months, you can pretty much put a shiny brass bare hook in the water and catch 3" panfish all day and night. Add some pieces of hot dog with a weight to get it down faster to the deeper bigger panfish (or else the tiny ones tear it apart before it ever gets down there) and it is fairly easy to catch the limit 10 panfish.

I wish they would come in and take away a lot of the turtles, many days it seems there are more turtles than fish which is really bad for fishermen. These turtles bite anything: live bream used as bait, jigs, worms, soft plastics, hard plastics, cranks... pretty much anything you throw out there they chase after and clamp down on, many times ruining good hooks and baits. Thats why I like the winter and early spring, the turtles are not out so it is just fish you catch (if you catch anything).

Seems a like a good overall day!

Yes it was a good day just to get out for a few hours... still waiting for the water to warm up so I can get my canoe out there. Of course on this pond, with a 1/2 oz or better lure on a decent spinning reel and 7' rod you can cast halfway across from one side, and then go to the other side and get the other half ;D