My family and i are travelling down to orlando florida so im going fishing at lake toho in kissimee. im planning fishing the weeds with soft plastic swimbaits and soft plastic jerkbaits. im only aiming for a trophy and im talking any fish over 7lbs to break my record. i dont care about numbers. i will use live bait if i have to but i prefer artificials. any advice would be greatly appreciated

:You are in for a treat. I went down there last year and caught my PB 8.5 lber albeit on a guided trip and live bait .

Anyway if you want a big fish on Lake Toho your best bet will be fishing live wild shiners on a float. This is the preferred method for Trophy Bass on Lake Toho. It's still a blast to see the bass explode on the shiners, you'll hear a splash akin to a cinder block getting thrown into the water then your rod doubles over. Toho sees a ton of tournament traffic so the big bass have probably seen it all.

If you have a few days to fish you can go the artificial route and then use shiners as a last resort, we did both on my trip. We fished weed edges with 7" curly tail worms IIRC. I caught a few nice fish on the worms but nothing bigger then 3.5 lbs and I also caught a nice chain pickerel which was somewhat random. There are weed edges everywhere so you should be able to figure it out with some patience. Also the fishing down there is really streaky. We caught the majority of our fish during two 20 minute stretches 6 hours apart. The fish initially hit as a 10 mph wind built early in the morning, then as the clouds rolled in the afternoon we had another run.

Once again be patient and good luck.

thanks for the advice. i wasnt able to get live bait because i forgot to bring money to buy some but i had some success there. the strangest thing i caught was an alligator. i was fishing a square lipped crank when i snagged a 3.5 foot alligator. i had to cut the line since i wasnt even considering going near it. i saw a few alligator gar which i think is what you thought your chain pickerel was. the one i saw was easily over 4 foot which is to big to be a pickerel. it was pretty obvioes these fish were highly pressured because nothing except some creature baits worked

i also saw huge tilapia everywhere by the shore. they were all spawning and had big orange nests. the largest one was very fat and about a foot and a half

i also saw huge tilapia everywhere by the shore. they were all spawning and had big orange nests. the largest one was very fat and about a foot and a half

Those tilapia might have been myan cichlid's.

They are usually bright orange.

no the fish werent orange their nests were. someone who lives their told me they were tilapia