hawgenvy

Thanks SirSnook. I've also been concerned about the lack of vegetation compared to a year ago in several locations in the Boca/Delray/Boynton area. Seems there are less shoreline emergent plants, and less pads as well, in residential and golf course locales. I always have better luck catching bass in the ponds with more abundant pads. I was not sure whether the diminution of the pads and shore plants was a result of some natural climatic phenomenon (we have had a number of cold fronts) or a deliberate action by the communities, possibly a byproduct of indiscriminate algae-reducing herbicidal chemicals. Communities of course care about the appearance of their waters, but I think to them the aesthetic of a sterile appearing plant-less lake is preferable to one with the slightest hint of scum. Although emergents like pickerel weed and reeds and pads are also found attractive, algae is an eyesore and can accelerate eutrophication, and it is probably much cheaper to get rid of everything than to clear the algae while leaving the good stuff. I think some of the richer communities try to keep some pads, etc, and many of the others don't. A thriving healthy ecosystem with big chunky happy bass is probably almost never a goal for residents and golfers in south Florida. Anyway, there are probably governmental rules and standards, and communities apparently have a lot of latitude. I would love to learn more about the whole subject but haven't found good information sources. So if you or anyone can link me to some information about SoFlo pond management science and practices I'd appreciate that.

Keep in mind that the spawn period is much longer the further south you go. In the tropics and south Florida, the bass spawn can last for several months. In the far north it could last only three weeks. Seasonal climatic changes (temp and day length) and seasonal biological changes (cyclic features of other related flora and fauna -- like insect hatches or the blue gill spawns) occur more abruptly the further north you go. Here in So Florida, summer seems to last practically all year and winter water temps can be in the 70s. And lots of water is shallow in SoFlo. The day length changes are less dramatic too. And pre-spawn, spawn, and post-spawn bass can all linger in the same area at the same time. Tonight the frogs are singing like crazy. I wonder if that corresponds to anything bassy. Maybe it's the frog chirp that is the proximate (most direct) signal for the initiation of the bass spawn! You can be sure that there is much interesting fish ecology/biology waiting to be discovered.

"Water Temps Drive the Spawn," by Mark Rogers and Dr Mike Allen, Bass Times, Jan 2006: http://sfrc.ufl.edu/allenlab/Popular%20Articles/Rogers&Allen_BassTimes.pdf

Keep your place in PA and get a winter home in Lake Co, Florida, rural but has lots of small towns, lakes everywhere surrounded by huge live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, tons of homes with boat docks, lakes loaded with world class LMB, fairly low cost of living. Mount Dora, for example, is a quaint town with lots of antique stores, restaurants, etc., and it's on the Harris Chain. Good hospitals nearby for when you get older. But get out of there June thru Sept.

I was bank fishing at a golf course pond with my cousin. From atop a five foot wooden wall, I pitched a brush hog out over some shoreline pickerel weed and into the stained water, an inch past the weeds. A bass struck it so fast and hard it took me totally by surprise, and when I set the hook it was like setting it into a moving freight train. The fish pulled the rod right out of my hands and my rig flew down into the thick pickerel weed below. The rod started jumping further away as the fish pulled on the line. This was a Dobyns Champion 734c rod with a Shimano Chronarch reel, not a rig I would give away without a fight. The rod ultimately became wedged firmly in the weeds and was stuck there, in spite of the fish straining at 65 lb braid with the drag tamped down all the way. The fish flexed the rod this way and that, and she even jumped a couple of times trying to shake the hook. I ran over to my cousin and grabbed his rig which was armed with a shaky head jig. I pulled some ottery looking creature off the hook, and was soon grateful to learn that a shaky head jig is a perfect instrument for retrieving a downed fishing rod. I snagged the jig hook on one of the line guides and reeled in my rod. Well, the big fish was still on! I successfully landed it, 4+ pounds of very impressive largemouth muscle. Of course, I tossed him back. You know, I'd never before had a rod pulled out of my hands, and hope it'll never happen again. I truly admire that powerful fish, the first one that almost got me back.

Thanks, anyway! Campo's was a great deal: a sturdy little skiff with a 15 HP outboard, an anchor, and a live well full of live shrimp, all for around $25. And only a few minutes from Lake Borgne's bounty of specks and reds. Ah, the good old days!

My wife and I and her brother's family were visiting all our kids at summer camp in upstate NY -- this adventure took place a couple of decades ago -- and we stayed at a local hot spot called Scott's Family Resort ("Since 1869"). The place had seen better days -- had probably peaked about a hundred years ago, and by now was just a touch on the extremely musty side. There was the main hotel (where my sister-in-law drank way too much one evening and at 2am woke us to let us know that all three of our young kids were gay, which they are still not), and there were also some outer cottages that leaned quite a bit. But the place was, honestly, on a very gorgeous lake. To find something to do the first evening, we wandered over to the old entertainment room and sat in the folding chairs among a dozen other guests to hear a musician on the stage, a straw-hatted singing banjo player that could not possibly have been under 103 years old playing songs from the 1910s, along with his young chorus of 90 year-olds. The entertainment was all very good only in the sense that there were no deaths or other medical emergencies during the show. We vowed never to attend another show at Scott's. The next morning I awoke uncharacteristically early (probably due to the asymmetrical mattress) and wandered down to the lake shore, where a blanket of mist hung over the clear waters, and the autumn colors of the trees above shone brilliantly in the rising sun. A man, a black man, was trying to overturn his overturned little skiff so he might fish a bit in the lovely morning, and of course I dashed over to lend a hand. Naturally, he then invited me along to fish. It turned out he was the grand entertainment that night. Indeed, he was the "amazing" Steve DePass, "Americas Singing Poet." He was touring all the finest country places. Anyway, we fished. We caught a one inch perch or two, but he asked a lot of questions about me, and by the end he knew all there was to know about my life. I promised I would be at his show. He was the big Saturday night attraction at Scotts. I told my wife the story and she said that's very nice, but going to the entertainment hall again was out. I said a promise was a promise and we HAD TO GO. She said "no" only 20 more times, and then agreed to go. This time the joint was packed. Lots of the local showed up, too (there's nothing else to do around there anyway.) America's Singing Poet asked over the mike if I were there (I raised my hand) and sang ABOUT ME for 20 minutes, and very cleverly, and funny as h**l, and I was down on the floor paralyzed with laughter and my wife thought she must have been transported to a parallel universe because this stranger was singing things about me that nobody else knew. Apparently, this guy can make up a humorous rhyming song about absolutely anything or anyone, instantly. And half the show was about me because I helped him lift his boat and went fishing with him for an hour.

I spend practically nothing -- compared to those guys who fish for marlin! I don't know why my wife can't understand this!

One more. I was fishing one windless autumn evening with a friend of mine in the Lousiana marsh, for speckled trout and red drum. This was back in the 1970s, before cell phones. You could rent a skiff with a small outboard back then from Blackie Campo's place in Shell Beach, about an hour east of New Orleans, where I was a student. We had motored over to Hopedale Lagoon and on into the endless brackish waters south of it, a pretty remote location. We fished around the reeds, pilings, and oyster beds for a couple of hours -- without a single bite. It was time to head home. But we couldn't get the outboard to turn over. The sun was setting soon. My arm was getting pretty sore pulling that cord. We played with the choke and the fuel bulb, to no avail. We decided to wait five minutes and give it another try. I gathered my strength and pulled once more as hard as I could. The motor's handle hit the underside of my expensive wrist watch and unlatched it. The gold watch flew off my wrist. We watched it sail through the air in a high arc, and kerplunk into the water. And of course, the motor did not start. What then ensued was ten minutes of silence. As the sky darkened we just sat there, kind of thinking, I think. I half-hardheartedly pulled the cord one more time. It started. We motored back to Campo's in the twilight.

Was fishing with a guide on Lake George in New York, for lake trout. I think we were trolling with a down rigger. I pulled in a rather big trout from very deep, and there was a second hook in its mouth, attached to a line. We pulled in the line, maybe a hundred yards of it, and lo and behold, it was connected to an expensive rod and reel that we recovered. Our guide recognized the rig, which belonged to a friend of his, another guide on the lake. After laughing for ten minutes, he called his buddy with the news.

These baits wiggle seductively even with the slowest fall. And they cast pretty well. No need to go above 1/8 oz.

Agree with RoLo. Toads and soft swimbaits like EZs can be magic in April. Bring some along!

Jig and craw trailer, blue, brown or green.

Didn't mean to imply that!

Apparently in China, which supplies much of the tilapia in the US, they are sometimes fed with livestock (pig) feces: http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/tilapia.asp

This is the Florida Dept of Health guideline document regarding recommendations for fish consumption. It is interesting that for freshwater fish largemouth bass are considered the most unhealthy to eat, especially for young women and children, for whom in many bodies of water it is advised not to eat any at all. Larger bass are more dangerous. Of course, it is difficult to know how accurate the risk assessments really are. In any case it is a little scary and certainly does not whet my appetite for bass. Notice that even bass caught deep in the Everglades, many miles from civilization, are nevertheless considered to be a health hazard. http://www.floridahealth.gov/programs-and-services/prevention/healthy-weight/nutrition/seafood-consumption/_documents/2013-advisory-brochure.pdf PS: I suppose farmed tilapia that swim in their own waste products are safe?

I would like to know how contaminated, and with what, the canals along homes and golf courses are in my home town, but I don't really know how to find out. And how do I know if the information is accurate? I know I'd eat the bass from a country lake that's said to be clean in south LA or in central FL. But I know I would not eat a fish from the East River or from a pond in Central Park in NYC. And there is a lot in between! I have actually feasted on green trout from LA that we caught near Venice, and they were great.

It's amazing how those tiny necks can handle a fat bass.

I know I know nothing. When the guy in the front or the back of the boat is throwing a blue thingamajig and gets three bites to my none I later buy a bunch of those thingamajigs; and when eventually I cast them myself a half dozen times without a bite I'm convinced they're useless and I go back to senkos and my standby frogs and swimbaits. Now, I forget where I stashed those cursed thingamajigs. Oh, Devil, how is it the milfoil is always greener on the other side? Some jerk may fish the same exact jerkbait the exact same way for a hundred years without catching a fish and won't even consider changing tactics. That's a very happy man, jerk or not. I am the opposite kind of jerk, the kind that's always driven to try something else. That's why I have two dozen unopened skirted jigs and old boxes of plastic worms and swimbaits that I think wont catch fish this week or next. Well, at least I am a loveable idiot -- loveable to those who market and sell new fishing equipment.

You could get a senko down there nicely on a little shaky head jig. Shake it but keep it subtle, on some fluoro line.

Per my amateur observations, Boca Raton area fishing (I fish evenings) last year was awesome for big fish in April, May and early June, but almost stopped altogether at the start of July (except for deep canals deep in the glades). And good bassing didn't turn on again until late October, with the sudden and delightful appearance of schoolies busting shad everywhere, aggressive tough bass amenable to small baits of all kinds, but especially senko types. Other anglers may have a different, and perhaps more accurate, interpretation of these seasonal events.

I would definitely in theory cull some LMB out of some of the waters around here in SoFlo that are loaded with too many small fish. The problem is, I'm always worried they are contaminated in these suburban residential and golf course lakes and canals. This spoils my appetite for them in advance. And besides, their breath smells like steamy bog. Even out in the Everglades and on Lake O the fish supposedly should be eaten sparingly due to contaminants. If I thought they were safe I'd bring home some nice one pounders to fry up for dinner. After all, Micropterus salmoides is hardly in danger of extinction or even diminution in Florida. On the other hand, so many salt water fish species sold in restaurants and fish markets are slowly disappearing in the wild. So, I either eat nutritious salt water fish and help drive them to extinction, or I eat the local bass, destroy my nervous system and die covered in boils.

I know what you're thinking, but it's the 'Slap Yo Mama' that makes me talk to birds.

Waiting for my Dobyns Champ 735c and Lew's Tournament MB reel (8.1:1), along with a bunch of baits, hooks, tungsten wts, and some Seaguar abrazx #17. All supposedly coming to the door tomorrow. Better get flowers for the wife to soften the blow. Not ordering anything else for eons. (Except for the buzzbaits I ordered the next day.) Somebody, I need help!

I always keep that little red can of spicy Slap Yo Mama by the stove. I think it might neutralize all the mercury and pesticides that concentrate so heavily in our Florida bass, and it sure makes it taste good too! It will give yur mama a slap indeed!