Hello Folks,
What a great weekend and a good weekend for fishin’. The rain was light to moderate and the fishin’ was good as well. I hope you had a chance to get on the water and take the family fishin’.
The panfish, bluegills and shellcrackers, are bitin’ real well in most of the chains in our area, and in the smaller lakes and ponds, too.
Again this week, Lake Monroe and Lake Woodruff are producin’ some nice stringer of bluegills and shellcrackers.
Most folks are driftin’ open water with crickets, and once they locate a bed of bluegills, they are driftin’ back and forth over the beds with red worms and crickets. You can also try usin’ a small Beetle Spin or a Road Runner to locate the beds and then anchor off the beds and cast over the beds and catch ’em that way as well.
You can catch plenty of bluegills and shellcrackers in the Butler Chain driftin’ over the beds with crickets. We have a new moon this weekend so the panfishin’ should be really good if we don’t get too much rain.
The bass fishin’ has been good in most of the chains in our area. The Kissimmee Chain has been good for both panfish and bass. You will do best to drift open water with crickets and red worms for the panfish. The bass are hangin’ around the movin’ water throughout the chain. If you get on the water early, try fishin’ the shoreline cover with plastic frogs and toads. You can also try fishin’ a swim-bait in those same areas, especially around the pads and the scattered grass.
The Butler Chain has had good bass fishin’. So, I went fishin’ with my son Tim and my grandson Brett last Friday on the Butler Chain. We started early and fished until 1:30 that afternoon. We caught and released 12 bass up to 2.5 lbs. We caught most of our bass on slow-sinkin’ Senko-type baits. We also caught a few bass on swim-baits around the pads, and the isolated grass patches.
We found a few bass in the submerged hydrilla and eel-grass beds. It was kinda cloudy and there weren’t a lot of schoolers where we were fishin’. We did see a few schoolers but the bass weren’t schoolin’ as often as they have been over the course of the past few weeks.
I wanted let you know that the bass fishin’ is gettin’ better in the Clermont Chain based on receivin’ some reports about the chain. Over the past few years, the chain has suffered with low water conditions. Since we have been gettin’ so much rain over the summer, the lakes are gettin0’ back to normal.
There was a tournament out there a few weeks ago and some nice bass were weighed in. The tournament trail is called the Bass Thugs Tournament Trail. The winnin’ team of Ryan Stephens and Heath Stephens weighed in five bass that weighed a total of 25.02 lbs.
The big fish for the tournament was caught by Kenneth Lucas that weighed 10.01 lbs. It’s great to see this chain come back to the old days, especially when you have great days on the water like these guys had.
Well, that’s it for this week.
I hope you have a great week and you get a chance to do some fishin’.
Tip of the week: slow sinkin’.
Save a few and good luck!
