Hello Folks,
I hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend. I hope you were as fortunate as I was. I was off all three days. Well, I didn’t have to work on Monday, so I got to sleep in a little.
I hope you had a chance to do some fishin’ over the weekend. Folks are still catchin’ plenty of panfish in most of the chains in our area. Some of the bigger lakes like Lake Monroe, Lake Woodruff, and Lake Jesup are still producin’ some nice stringers of panfish.
Most of the folks tell me all you need is some crickets and red worms, and you are good to go. You need to drift mid-lake until you get on a bed of ‘em. Once you locate a bed of panfish, keep driftin’ back and forth until they quit bitin’. I know it seems redundant, but folks tell me that’s one of the best way to catch ‘em.
The Butler Chain has been real good for bluegills and shellcrackers. They must have some big bluegills in the chain because when I fish with Rick we have a hard time keepin’ those bluegills from bitin’ our plastic worms. You might say, ‘How do I know they are bluegills?’ Because they bite differently than a bass. A bass will either swim off with your worm and you see your line movin’ or they will whack-it. When a bluegill bites your plastic worm, they keep tappin’ it because they can’t get the plastic worm in their mouth.
Over the years, I have caught a few bluegills on plastic worms. If you fish for bass long enough, you will figure out how a bass bites and how a bluegill bites.
We have been gettin’ our share of the rain in Central Florida, so if you want to catch some bass make sure you are on the lookout for some runnin’ water.
You will find the bass hangin’ around those areas feedin’ on the bait-fish. The Kissimmee Chain is a great example. You have the water flowin’ from West Lake Toho to Lake Cypress and then to Lake Hatchineha and then to Lake Kissimmee, all the way to Lake Okeechobee.
The bait-fish like to feed on the forage that comes down the canals and the bass hang around those same areas feedin’ on the bait-fish. You will find the bass bustin’ on the bait-fish and you should be able to catch ‘em on lipless crankbaits, swimmin’ worms, buzz-baits, or anything that will get their attention. Once they quit schoolin’ or feedin’, you can catch ‘em on a slow-sinkin’ Senko-type bait or a Carolina-rigged plastic worm.
The Harris Chain and the Butler Chain have been good as of late for some nice stringers of bass. You still need to get on the water real early and fish around the pads or along the shoreline cover.
You can also try flippin’ the heavy cover, once the sun gets up. Once the sun gets up around mid-mornin’, move to deeper water.
Rick and I fished the Butler Chain on Saturday and we found bass feedin’ on bait-fish around the submerged hydrilla and eel-grass beds just off shore. We saw plenty of little schoolers throughout the day.
We didn’t mess with ‘em because they were so small. They were a bunch of fun though. They would feed on the bait-fish and those little schoolin’ bass would come completely out of the water tryin’ to catch some bait-fish.
Well, that’s it for this week. I hope to see ya on the water.
See ya next week.
Tip of the week: submerged grass beds.
Save a few and good luck!
