Hello Folks,
We are continuing to have some cold weather comin’ to town, and it’s been cold all this weekend.
The BassMaster High School Tournament is on the Harris Chain this week. The tournament will have been held on January 22 and 23 of this week. The weather will give all the anglers a run for their money. We could see some big bags brought to the scales or if the weather continues to be bad, it could have been kinda tough. I am hoping the anglers had good luck this week, and that I will have some results for my column next week.
Kyle at Bitter’s Bait & Tackle reports that a few folks have been catchin’ some specks in Lake Monroe and Lake Jesup. With this cold weather, I’m sure the speck bite is gonna be a little slow for a couple of days. Once the weather settles down for a few days. the specks should start bitin’ again. If you do get a chance to do some speck fishin’, make sure you take along plenty of minners. You don’t want to get on’em and run out of minners, because you will be kickin’ yourself in the pants for not gettin’ enough to start with.
Kyle also reports that folks have been catchin’ some specks up on the St. John’s River around Palatka on minners.
The bass fishin’ is still doin’ good down in Palm Bay, at the Headwaters. Folks are catchin’ some big bass on shiners. I keep gettin’ notices of lots of bass bein’ caught down there, and some bass up to 10 pounds are bein’ caught durin’ each trip!
The bass fishin’ here has been hit or miss dependin’ where you go. Kyle reports that the bass fishin’ has been a little slow and if you want to catch a big bass, you need to take some shiners with you on your next trip.
We have a new moon at the end of this month, on the 29th. You all know what I believe about the moon phases. Three days before and three days after the new or full moon will improve your chances in catchin’ a big bass. It’s not 100 percent a sure thing, but from all my years fishin’, and from all my buddies that I have been fishin’ with for a while, they’ll agree with me.
I started keepin’ records of my times when I fished and caught big bass. I was inspired by the Bass Professor a/k/a Doug Hannon, since passed. I had met Doug back in the 80s at a fishin’ show I was attending. If you don’t know who Doug is, I would suggest you do some research on his expertise in catchin’ big bass. He is known for catching and releasing over 800 largemouth bass of 10 or more pounds.
Doug was a great inventor and one of the country’s big-bass authorities. He wrote hundreds of newspaper articles and he also wrote three books. He also invented a pocket guide for anglers called The Moon Clock. This pocket guide is what got me to keepin’ records of my catches while I was bass fishin’. It worked for me and if you want to gain some more knowledge about Doug’s approach to bass fishin’, I would suggest you seek out information on the internet about Doug Hannon, “The Bass Professor”.
I’ll see ya next week.
Tip of the week: New Moon
Save a few and good luck!
