From Here to There

Thought I’d go get some live bait this afternoon and maybe call JP to see if He would like to join Me for a few hours and catch a decent bass with the Shiners.
Well, I got the first bass about a pound and a half. Then I heard JP hoot & holler down the bank and watched a really nice bass chase His Shiner all the way to the shore almost at his feet without connecting. So He threw it (the shiner) right back out and it got annihilated. Here is all beautiful four and one half pounds of her.

JP 4# 8oz 11-13-10

Again He beats me, maybe I should quit calling Him

Decided to fish Lake Charm this afternoon. This wonderful little lake has been plagued with a nasty algae for the last year or so. A month ago I drove over to look at it and talked to one of the home owners who told me the algea had been sprayed to get rid of it. Oh! and the water looked like chocolate milk, ugh! Tonite the algae was gone and the water was pretty clear.

I saw some minnows along the grass line at the waters edge so decided to throw a small 1/8 oz spinner bait. A good choice, third cast got a 1 pound bass. As I worked my way around the lake I managed to catch 5 more and missed several others. All in all a nice 2 hrs of fishing.

PS. Lake Charm has given up many 6+ Lb fish over the last 4 years. We know that there are bass in here weighing in excess of 10 lbs. I just haven’t hooked or landed one yet.

Some days are better than others. But any day fishing is a good one. Today was one of the better ones. Decided to fish the Winter Park chain of lakes this afternoon. Specifically Lake Maitland and maybe a side trip to Lake Nina. I loaded uo some Live Shiners I had caught last night, thinking these would be my ticket to success. Boy was I mistaken. The Shiners were nice and healthy, what you might call frisky. With the cold front having just come through, I really thought these shiners would be the “Lure de Juor” boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Lake Maitland 6 lbs 8 oz Buzz'n Gator

The first lily pad field I through my frog “Buzz N Gator” into a nice 3 1/2 lb fish blew up on it and missed. In fact it missed two more times. I never did get a hook in it. This gave me pause to think. Hmmmm maybe a frog over the lily pads is what they want today, so let’s try some more pad fields. The third set of pads I threw at the first blow up was this 6 and one half pond beauty. I subsequently went on to catch a few more, but none as big as this one. 4 hrs fishing in town  20 minutes from the house. God it doesn’t get much better than that.

Let’s see, fished Rodman Monday Voted Tuesday, fished one of the retenion ponds Thursday and this 4 1/2 lb Bass.

Trotwood 4 1/2 lbs

This little retention pond isn’t much larger than a football field.

Today I had the opportunity to fish Rodman Resevoir (Lake Oklawaha) up near Palatka, FL. A good friend and fishing buddy Blaine Partee had qualified for the State championship Tournament of the “Florida BASS Federation Nation”. We decided that this would be an good time to scout the area or “Prefish” for the tournament. Got up at 3:30 am and departed at 4:30 am for the 2+ hour drive. We arrived about 7:00 am and had to wait a few minutes for the sun to give us enough light to safely navigate this famous Bass haven. Rodman is a flooded area with lots of submerged and partially submerged tree stumps.

We started fishing about 7:30 AM, and I immediately jumped off a five pounder and Blaine broke off a nice fish on a rattle trap. Then it got very quiet. We pitched and flipped the pads and water hyacinths while dragging the live shiners behind us. Nary a bite for the next 5 1/2 hours. I happened to look over Blaine’s shoulder, and about a half mile down the lake I saw school of fish breaking the surface. Now you know this must have been a nice school of good sized fish to see it that far away. By the time we had fished our way to them, it was 1:30 PM. Then in the next 1 1/2 hours, we put 30 fish in the boat that were between 2 and 4 pounds. A phenomenal hour and a half of fishing. We had located some nice fish for his tournament. The wind started blowing and the fishing slowed a bit so we decided to head home.

We should have been celebrating and chattering all the way, but I noticed  Blaine was very quiet. I asked if anything was wrong, and he told me he was passing another kidney stone. Not a pleasant experience I’ve been told. But it was a great day.

There is this small lake near the house, about a half mile away. I’ve caught some nice bass from there this last year. The problem is that it is surrounded by brush, trees and swampy type muck. The only access to fish is from a small pier that the city park service built there leaving most of the lake untouched. So I promised myself that I was going to take one of my inflatable pontoon boats out there to fish. Invited my good friend and usual fishing partner JP to join me this morning. This little lake has an abundance of bait fish for the bass to feed on, Golden Shiners, Bluegill and Talapia maybe even a few Crappie. The goal was two fold. To see how deep this lake is and to see if we could catch a bass over five pounds. We started the morning fishing “flukes” an artificial soft plastic minnow shape. There was quite a bit of “slop” algea on much of the surface of the water so we had to fish our some distance from the shore line. It wasn’t long before JP brought this beauty weighing 5 3/4 lbs. She would be the largest of the morning, but not the only one, we caught 10 bass betweeen the two of us from 7:30 until 10 a.m. Talking to some of the old timers still living on the area, have heard that before there was the park, the area was pasture land and orange groves, and 10 and 11 pond bass were not uncommon in this lake. Time will tell if their desendents are still here.

JP & his 5 3/4 pounder.

Good friends good fishing.