Spring Break...(pics)

[basspro48]

Well I got back at 3am sunday morning from spending my spring break at my grandpa's ranch in Florida, wish I could say I was happy to be home We left on friday the 6th I believe, and we got to the sunshine state at about 9am saturday morning. My grandpa's ranch is in Wellington in West Palm Beach and it has a big canal out front, a smaller shallower canal out back, and two small ponds, one in the front of the house and one in the back. As soon as we pulled in I pulled out one of my rods and started throwing a 5/16oz blue/chart/white spinnerbait in the back pond and at about 9:30 a nice lunker inhaled my spinnerbait. She went 4.75lbs, not bad for the first fish of the trip, my dad and me continued fishing for the rest of the day and caught plenty of 1-2lbers until dark.

Woke up late sunday morning, went to church, got back to the ranch around noon and I decided to fish thre back canal for a little while. The back canal is shallow, very clear, and has lots of thick grass mats in it. So I took a rod rigged with a junebug senko and a rod rigged with a black ribbit, after walking back there I found a few small fish still on their beds so I pitched the senko to em and caught 3 or 4 of em. Then when the clouds came in I picked up my flippin stik with the frog and started slowly buzzing it across the mats, my fifth cast was greeted by a chunky 2lber, then a few minutes later a 3lber ate the ribbit. The bite stopped after that so I left the back canal and did a little bream fishing with junior in the front pond, we caught a whole pile of bream, a couple nice catfish, and junior landed his first cichlid on his zebco rod. My dad and me went out to the front canal before dark but didn't catch except one dink I caught on a LC sammy 100.

Woke up late again on monday and missed the topwater bite, so we went out to the front canal and I was paralleling the bank with a chart/white chatterbait and my dad was throwing a black/gold glitter fluke. After paralleling the whole canal I only had three 14inch bass to show for it, meanwhile my dad was tearin em up down on the oposite end with the fluke. But when I came to the very end of the canal I threw the chatterbait parallel to a weedline with a drainage pipe in it and a chunky 3lber shot out of the pipe and nailed my chatterbait. Continued fishing for the rest of the day and caught a few more keepers but that was it. When the sun started to go down we headed to the back pond again and I proceeded to absolutely slay em on my sammy 100, that is until a nice 8 foot gator started to take interest in my sammy.

My dad woke me up at 5:30 tuesday morning and we went out to the front canal. I caught a dink on my first cast with a smithwick devil's horse and my dad caught 1.5lber on a Mann's 1-, but that was pretty much it. Until about 6:45, I picked up my black ribbit again and made a long cast parallel to the weedline, the frog plopped down on a weed mat and I started buzzing right on that weedline. Then right as the frog reached a small branch in the weeds my frog was absolutely destroyed in the most awesome topwater strike I have ever seen. The fish exploded on the frog, throwing a huge splash, and scaring the **** out of me because of how loud and huge the splash was. I set the hook hard and the fish immediatly started peeling 50lb stren super braid off my spool like a freight train, it ran out to the middle of the canal and flung itself completely out of the water. At this point I was screaming to my dad "This is the one!!!!" and franticly trying to turn this fish that I thought was 10lber. I finally got him coming my way when he jumped again and took off down the bank, a few minutes later I got him in and hoisted a beautiful 6.54lber in the air. After recovering from that fish I continued until about 9 but didn't catch anything else that morning. Me and my dad headed over to Loxahatchee Bait and Tackle at 10 and talked to a really nice guy named Tom I think, he actually grew up right around Mechanicsville and the Newport News area. He told us about Lake Osborne, which is located by the Palm Beach county airport north of Boynton Beach in a huge park called John Prince park. So we headed down there and fished there until about 5, I only caught 4 small keepers on a senko but my dad caught a 4.5, a 3.8, and two 2lbers all on a black/blue Case Plastics big mama 11inch paddletail worm t-rigged with an 1/8oz weight.  

For the rest of the week we continued to fish Osborne and the local canals, catching tons of bass, bream, catfish, cichlids, and one little 3 foot gator. On thursday we went down to Ft. Lauderdale, had lunch with my other grandpa and dropped another $150 at BPS, but the really cool thing was BPS had a new custom embroidering service so I got them to make me hat with my BASS club name and a bass on it. I didn't get to do any fishing saturday, the last day we were there, because I went with my grandpa, who is an equine vet, to the Gulfstream race track and stayed for a couple hours, got back at 1 and had to leave for home. But it was great trip and I can't wait until next year.  

I am at school now so I can't put the pics up yet, but I will when I get home. And sorry about the really long post.

[Cigarlover 1]

Sounds like you had a great time. Can't wait to see the pics.

[basspro48]

Ok here are the pics...

first fish of the trip

gar caught on a chatterbait, not sure what the weight was

big cichlid that also hit the chatterbait

Junior's first cichlid

6lber

Again (and if it looks like I just woke up, I did)

[basspro48]

pics cont'd...

4lber out of lake Osborne

Osborne 5lber

A 3.5lber caught on a live bream in the front canal

And I don't know if I stated this before or not but I caught most of my fish on either t-rigged weightless junebug senko, a 3/8oz chart/white chatterbait, 5/16oz chart/blue.white spinnerbait, and most of my big fish came on either a black Gambler Cane toad or a black Stanley Ribbit. My dad caught most of his fish on a black back/gold glitter fluke and bass assassin shad, and he caught all of his bigger fish on an 11inch Case Plastics big mama paddletail worm in black/blue with an 1/8oz weight.

[Pa Angler]

Great job guys, what a way to spend a spring break sure beats getting wasted and acting a fool.

[The Unabasser]

great report and great pics...good read

[Troutfisher]

Great job!

[roadwarrior]

Excellent!