Had a tournament Saturday on Lake Talquin, just outside Tallahassee. It's the middle of summer and it has been hot as blue blazes so I figured I was in like Flint when I drew a partner who is a whiz at Carolina rigging the ledges. We were fishing out of his boat and he told me to bring two rods: a Carolina rig and a back-up Carolina rig.
We went to Hurricane Ledge first thing. He had caught ten bass on ten casts there one morning last week. We fished it for about 90 minutes with no strikes at all. We then started a milk run of five or six spots and finally, after noon, he caught two fish and I caught one.
We got to the weigh-in and found that the guys who had done well had caught them shallow, in the lily pads. Whouda thunk it??!!
I got thinking about it and remembered that the water temperature started out at 84 degrees and topped out at about 88. This time of the year it is normally well into the 90s. We have been getting afternoon thunderstorms just about every day and it looks like the fish were taking advantage of that highly oxygenated water up shallow.
I'll just have to add that set of circumstances to my data bank.
