West Lake Toho - Sunday March 16, 2008 - tournament day!
We immediately went to the off-shore hydrilla I was talking about in my last report. The wind was unusually strong yesterday morning, but we did our best fishing the grass. After 2 hours or so, we only had a 2 lber in the boat off a Trick Worm. So we headed out to my partner's fishing spot in the southern end of the lake near the lock. After two hours of nothing we hooked into 3 legal bass in a matter of 30 minutes, all of which came on C-rigged senkos. By 1:00 the sun was beating down, the wind died and the bite got slow again. So I decided to run back to the open water hydrilla and give it that our last couple hours. This time, the bite was on! Fish were schooling up EVERYWHERE. We must have hooked into a total of 15+ bass or so. Most of which were dink schoolies caught on husky jerks ripped through the feeding frenzy, but we also managed to hook into some solid keepers with Trick Worms in the open grass (biggest was 3.5 lbs). I kept hoping my giant swim bait would nab a big fish while they were schooling up, but it never happened. They kept schooling up like that even while we were leaving at 2:45.
By the time it was over, we'd caught 9 legal fish. Our best 5 weighed 11.5 lbs, which was surprisingly good enough for 2nd place out of the 15 boats in my club. (I think we have the stingiest scale in the world, but whatever). Most anglers I talked to also reported getting most of their bites later in the day in the open water grass. I have a feeling that a lot of people wasted time trying to pick beds like the pros have been doing all week. Unfortunately for them, Sunday was too windy for that and the water had gotten somewhat murky.
On a cool side note, while we were in the southern end of Toho we eventually started fishing around the lock. That's when KEVIN VAN DAM drove up next to us on his way to lock through heading back down to Kissimmee. And I mean he drove up RIGHT NEXT TO US. I could have literally cast INTO his boat. We'd already seen a few pros go through, but seeing KVD pull up was the coolest thing in the world. Me and my fishing partner just stood there in shock. He was throwing his crank bait around while his camera man filmed behind him. About his 6th cast he missed a bite at the front of lock wall. Then he put his poll down and locked on through. I found out later that we'd also seen his boat (and his crowd followers) earlier in the day when he was fishing the off-shore grass on the western side of Toho. As everyone now knows, he won. One thing that struck me while I was watching him fish was how intense and methodical he is. Not just fishing but everything from the time his engine cut, that trolling motor was in the water and he was making casts. Every-second-counts type of fishing. I'm still waiting for my partner to send me the pictures.
Took 2nd place and saw KVD fishing up close. It was a pretty good day. 8-)
