FloridaFishinFool

Berkley 3" redeye swimbait. Anything that matches the hatch... and these swimbaits are very durable.

All of the above plus run non-ethanol fuel if possible, use fuel stabilizer always, and I use the Sea Foam fuel additive which will actually dissolve any gum buildups from the tank to the spark plug and burn it out with the fuel. I have been running my Yamaha 4-stroke this way for 3 years with zero running problems. A lot of people don't realize that gas being a natural product made from organic matter at one time, once it is refined it immediately begins to chemically breakdown and separate. Fuel is really only good for about 30 days unless treated with a chemical stabilizer that will give you up 12 months of fuel chemical stability. When I first bought my Yamaha used, it had a similar problem. It would not idle, and when I revved it up it would almost stall and sometimes just shut down. After two trips out like this, the Sea Foam had finally begun to work dissolving gummy buildup in the carburetor and on my third trip out she ran like a bat out of hell and has been running great since. Sea Foam does work. If you follow the instructions, a double dose for cleaning, and a single dose for regular maintenance which is where I am at with it now. The ethanol (alcohol) in the fuel could be causing problems... it also attracts water into the tank if left sitting for a while. You might try dumping old fuel and trying new fuel with Sea Foam additive and run it and see if it does not clear up soon. I forgot to mention, being here in central Florida I don't winterize my outboard motor. Some people let their motor sit unused for months at a time due to being in a colder climate, but here I run my outboard at a minimum at least every 2 weeks even if it is just backing it out of the garage and running it in the driveway for 5 or 10 minutes. One thing I can be sure of though doing it this way, she is ready to run when I can take her out.

Braid = everything! Mono = Nothing! I should not say nothing- but I have not used mono for fishing for decades. I will not use mono for anything other than backing up braid or fused superline on a spool. I use braid or fused superlines for everything these days and I don't use a leader either. It is braid or fused superline from reel to lure.

If I used a heavier hook or added a weight of any size I'd have more of a problem with suspending the lure and keeping it off the bottom. The whole point is to get away from weight. A #4 is as heavy as I need to go. I kind of always thought a #4 was more than heavy enough. I want the lure to have a very slow descent rate. I want to be able to swim it right along the tops of eel grass and bottom vegetation or have it light enough to swim it on the surface topwater. So no, I would not go any heavier than a #4.

I've been throwing weightless rubber for nearly 40 years. Here in Florida I have no choice. When you see how thick the bottom vegetation is around here, putting a weight on a rubber worms takes it right down into all that vegetation and makes fishing impossible. So I learned real quick to suspend weightless rubber and swim it, jerk it, jig it up and down, topwater, drag it over top lily pads and let it fall into open spots, whatever works. Its a lot of fun. Generally I use a #4 hook and various rubber baits and work cover and vegetation like crazy with it. So yeah, this is nothing new...

Speaking of eating both baits... A few months ago I was out on a lake and caught a schooling bass hitting on baitfish with a Rapala minnow lure and when I got that bass to the boat he had three baitfish still in his mouth. No telling how many fell out on the way to the boat. My lure was number 4 from what I could tell. When they are hungry they are hungry!

Yes it has happened to me before. A co-worker buddy and I were fishing a small pond which was really the deep hole left over from a lake that was drying up. I was on one side and he was on the other. We were both using live shiners and we both cast out towards the middle of the pond, I cast a little to my left and he cast to the center. About the time he was hollering he had one on, my line was moving out too. And it soon became clear we were both hooked into the same fish! I let my line out and let him try and land the fish and he played idiot for a second and tried to crane the bass in and his line snapped. (He tried lifting the bass out of the water like his rod was a crane) the fish dropped back into the water and for him it was gone! Oh well, not to worry dummy on the other shore, I'll get your hook back for ya! So it was my turn to reel in the same fish. Needless to say it but I never heard the end of that one. The other guys at work made fun of us for years about us hooking into the same bass. It does happen, but it is rare. A moment you'll never forget! Just don't tell anyone- but you already did!

The problem I had with beetle spins and why I rarely if never use them any more is because my percentage of hookups was not all that great. The beetle spin is a hit or miss type of lure. I much prefer to use a rooster tail with a treble hook and an inline profile. The hookup percentage increases dramatically, but you can not consider a rooster tail as weedless by any means. If bouncing a spinner off of wood is needed then go with a beetle spin, but if out in open water try a rooster tail. They work great in so many situations when other lures won't. And with rooster tails they make several variations including beetle spin profile types, and the regular rooster tails are available in sizes from 1/8 oz all the way to 1 oz and is 3.5 inches long for bigger fish. Have any of you ever watched Glen Lau's bigmouth documentary on LMB filmed here in central Florida in one of our spring fed crystal clear rivers? He filmed underwater bass hitting on hundreds of different lures. And this is important information to learn for bass fishermen as Glen was basically filming above and below water at the same time. He showed over and over how huge monster DD bass would inhale the entire V shaped spinners with double and triple blades on them. Every time the fisherman LOST that monster bass because of the shape of the lure. The single hook points to the inside of the V and and when the bass inhales the entire lure there is NO WAY the hook can be set. When the fisherman above yanks on the line to set the hook all he did was pull the lure out of the huge bass' mouth. No hookup! He also showed over and over how when a bass hits a V shaped spinner, sometimes they hit the blades and again, no hook up. No fish. So what's the point of using a lure that simply is not designed well for 100% hookups? And because of this very reason I no longer use the V shaped spinners because of this important video documentary. I use the inline spinners with a treble hook. And if a fish inhales that one, I stand a far better chance of hooking the bass. And the same issue applies to the beetle spin. It is only effective when a fish hits the grub and hook. It the fish inhales the entire lure, you may not be able to set the hook. If the fish hits the blades you may not be able to set the hook. So here is an issue I have gone past- right straight to inline spinners of various sizes with trailing treble hooks. I rarely lose a fish on these. When Glen filmed these activities under the water, he also showed the old fisherman above, and sometimes the fish biting the lure was so subtle the fisherman above did not even know his lure was getting bit on. Once he saw this happening on film, the old fisherman changed his way of fishing to try and compensate for this and he even says his percentage of hookups increased dramatically. Watch this video and see if it does not change the way you bass fish!

The main thing to consider is that the charger does not want to see anything being drained out of the batteries while charging. If it is putting a trickle charge on the battery, anything draining the battery while it is trying to charge negates the charge. You can leave everything hooked up as long as everything is turned off so there is nothing draining the battery while charging. A lot of people use a battery switch for this reason. Something to consider... some chargers deliver an automatically variable amount of charge to the batteries. If the battery is really low the charger might deliver more current say around 10 to 15 amps, and as the battery is charging up the charger could reduce the amount of current flowing into the batteries to a trickle charge of less than 1 amp. If something else were on draining the batteries while charging it could fool some chargers into staying in the higher current delivery mode which is not good for batteries and can cook them if left too long like that. When I charge my batteries I manually set the charger to its minimum level of charge so I never run the risk of the charger automatically going into its 12 amp fast charge mode because I do not want to "cook" the batteries- ever- even if I run them down low which thankfully I haven't yet.

@Walmart- Berkley "Shock" rod models either the SHC701M or SHC701MH, each are $40.00.

God bless her! I hope she recovers quickly!

I'm not trying to bash them, but when a store has a clearance rack with red tags clearly marking the price still on the showroom floor and I am in the store filling up my basket with items very clearly marked, one would think the store should be obligated to honor those in my face prices rather than tell me ooooops sorry, all those prices are now wrong and literally take the items away from a customer right then and there and roll the display off the show floor right in front of me. The least the manager could have done was honor those prices, but he would not budge, and because of that I am not inclined to return to their store especially after finding out the products I wanted to see were only available online and for higher prices than I can get elsewhere. Dick's has turned me away for two reasons today and I'm not trying to bash them, only state what happened and my displeasure with it.

I was looking at a rack of red labels- the same one the manager said were all priced incorrectly. He rolled the display off the show floor and into the back warehouse right in front of me as I was grabbing for stuff! I wanted two more rolls of Trilene braid and he said it would not ring up for the red tag price of $5.97 per roll. I had to put more than half of the items I grabbed back. I was not going to pay $17.97 for that braid, not when I can get it cheaper on ebay. At this point after finding out Dick's had the items I wanted only online and none in the store, I have no reason to go back there. Gander Mountain is another story. They have nice clearance bins all over the place. Dick's did not. I had even called Dick's on like Friday or Saturday and was told the sale started on Sunday, and today is only Thursday. If the sale was over, it sure was a short one!

Wow, some of you pay some mighty high fishing fees. My Florida freshwater license for the whole year is $17.00 and if I want to fish salt water it is another $17.00 on top of that. Here in Florida I use mostly public boat ramps paid for by our taxes so there are no ramp fees at most locations, but my local Winter Park chain of lakes charges me $14.00 a year for ramp fees. A one day use is $6.00, so the annual pass is the only way to go. The nice thing about this chain of lakes having a boat ramp fee is that it keeps out a lot of people who simply do not want to pay it. If it were an open access public ramp there could be twice as many boats or more using it. So the ramp fee is a deterrent keeping a lot of heavy traffic out of there.

One day I was fishing Hopkins Prairie in the Ocala National Forest and I saw this bird land on a cattail about 8 inches above the water line and a bass jumped out of the water trying to eat the bird but missed it.

I just got back from Dick's and I was not impressed. They did not have the line I wanted, nor the rods I wanted to look at. They are available only through their website online. So I asked about clearance rods, reels, and lures, and they had one small rack of lures, so I started grabbing a few and some Trilene braid marked down to $5.97. I had just put one roll in my basket and was going back for 2 more rolls and the manager came over and said the items on clearance were not priced right and he rolled the entire clearance display into the back warehouse and said the items I had just picked out would not price out at the register as they were marked on the clearance rack and he would not budge on letting me have it for that price since I already had it in hand. The Trilene braid was now $17.97. Needless to say it, but Dick's was a complete waste of time. At least Gander Mountain had a ton of clearance lures marked 50% off the price tag so I cleaned up on some things there. Bottom line is I can now see I have no reason to ever go back to Dick's. They have reduced the size of their fishing dept down to just about useless. Even their fishing line choices are super limited. While at Gander Mountain they are still useful in that they have tons of clearance lures marked down. But even they have reduced their fishing dept. size down to almost as bad as Dick's. I was surprised to find at Gander Mountain they still had Shimano curado CU-200G7 and Shimano Curado CU-300E7 reels on display being sold as new when I just checked with a Shimano dealer yesterday that parts are already being discontinued for those reels and Gander Mountain is still selling them on display as new? And they did not even have any new curado reels on display. What's up with that? It is clear that from now on my only real choice for a wide selection of fishing gear is Bass Pro. I just wish the closest store was not an hour away.

Thanks! West Toho is on my top 5 lakes in Florida. East Toho gets the most attention and tournaments and commercial use, but West Toho is the best kept secret! Or was... I have seen more big bass come out of West Toho lately than just about any other. It is also a very historic lake. A Seminole Indian chief Eematla AKA "King Phillip" kept his tribe and family protected on the islands in West Toho back in the late 1700's and early 1800's. His son known as "WildCat" Coacoochee was born on the Southern island there around 1807 and would rise to be a great chief like his father and fight side by side with Osceola in the Seminole Indian wars.

Was this on Toho East or West?

I would not exactly call them weedless. Sure they will bounce off structure sometimes if you hit it right, but I have hopelessly snagged more beetle spins than I can count! Even snagged a few gators with them- especially if you add a trailer hook. If you want to try a weedless spinner, I just bought some of these for the first time and have yet to try them out, but I hear good things about them:

What did you catch those on? This line in your post " I looked over at the reeds and saw the line going crazy , set the hook..." kind of makes me think of live bait? Congratulations on the nice fish! And for toughing it out on a day like today! Oh, and one more question, which Toho lake were you on? East or West?

I use several Browning reels myself. I inherited one from my father that I spent a lot of money on to restore and love it. I also have purchased some newer Browning Midas reels that are super smooth, cast and retrieve as well as any other. Bass Pro now owns Browning and when you get inside these reels what you will find is that Bass Pro and Browning are made in the same factory in Korea and share much of the same tooling and you will find a lot of the parts are interchangeable and Bass Pro does support the Browning reels, even those made before Bass Pro purchased Browning in 2005. I actually purchased the very last drive gear and one of the very last 4 pinion gears they had in stock from when Bass Pro bought out Browning and it was amazing they actually had the gears in stock that I was able to use to repair my father's old 1990's Browning reel with- that came out of another Browning reel. A lot of people tend to overlook the Browning reels, but they are a good value for the price. I buy mine used on ebay and I actually prefer to buy them broken listed as parts reels because I can fix them and I do very well doing it this way. The last two Browning reels I purchased on ebay for under $40.00 and one was only $25.00, each came with 4 ball bearings in the handle, ball bearing on the line guide, ball bearing on the drive shaft, three on the spool, heck they have more ball bearings than some of my Shimano curado's. I think the bearing count for these Browning reels is 10 ball bearings in one reel. The Midas reels have two braking systems, both magnetic brakes and centrifugal. I just bought replacement brake shoes and they were like $1.05 for a pack of six! Cheap! Same thing with the Bass Pro reels. Cheap parts. And the reels are 7.1:1 speed and really smooth to use and have drilled out lightweight wiffle type of spools. Super low profile and fit in the hand and palm well. Bottom line, Browning is a decent reel for a very good price. One thing I would be concerned about though, is that when you push down on the cast release button, it has a piece of plastic that trips the clutch. If I lived in sub-freezing parts of the country I'd be concerned about breaking cold plastic pieces, but you could have this problem with any reel made these days. Here in Florida I don't have to worry about this, but as I overhauled and rebuilt the reels that was really the only thing I did not like about them. My curado and chronarch reels have a metal bar that trips the clutch. But other than that, I'd recommend the Browning and Bass Pro reels- the better ones.

Welcome fellow native Floridian! I'm in Orlando so Vero Beach is not too far away.

I just picked up some new Storm swimbaits. I have been wanting some that resemble small bluegill and other baitfish and that is precisely what Storm is targeting and they were on sale at my local Walmart- http://www.rapala.com/storm/soft-baits/wildeye-live-series---freshwater/?id=4 Storm has produced a nice variety and I'm gonna stock up on some of these...

For safety reasons a 25hp should be bolted onto the transom. The pressure clamps are enough to hold the motor onto the boat and in place when on dry land, but once out on the water if you do any sharp turning the motor could slide around and be a real problem as you stated. Been there, done that. My motor has a 4 bolt pattern, but two of the bolt holes are in a location that are unusable, but the other two I drilled out and bolted as described above and have not had any problems since.

John Fox "How, When, and Where to catch bass" and Denny Brauer's Flippin' Techniques which is still only available on VHS and is out of print is the best one I have seen.