Glad you had a good trip. There is nothing like the sound of a 12 foot gator
crashing in the water, especially when you don't see him first Tends to
wake you up a little.

---
Chuck Coger
http://www.fishin-pro.com



"TNBass" wrote in message
...
I'm sitting at my desk and looking out the window at four does and six
fawns
browsing the new grass in my front yard. Dogwood leaves are turning red
among the still-green maples, oaks, and ash of the woods around my house,
but gray skies and cooling temperatures herald fall's arrival. The vacuum
cleaner drones in another part of the house, and Titan fans are smoldering
from a close loss to the Patriots. As I watch the fawns cavort under the
watchful gaze of their mothers, I reflect upon the events of the past four
days, during which Justin Hires and I drove down to Okeechobee, Florida to
experience the "bass capital of the world." We fished two days with Moe on
the north end of the lake, caught a lot of 8 to 16-inch bass, familiarized
ourselves with the site of next spring's ROFB tournament, and both came
close to boating some real hawgs.

At April's Mid-TN Classic, Justin won a two-day guided bass fishing trip
on
Lake Okeechobee, courtesy of our good buddy and professional bass guide
Moe.
You may recall, my confusion about return times at the April Mid-TN
Classic
resulted in disqualifying Justin's fish, which bumped him down in the
standings and out of first-day money. He handled his disappointment well,
and Moe's "good sportsmanship" prize took away the sting. Justin was
thrilled to know that he might finally achieve a life-long dream of
catching
one of Okeechobee's renowned10-pounders.

I won't say if either of them invited me along or if I just horned in, but
Wednesday morning found Justin and me tossing our gear in my pickup, and
by
4 AM we pointed southward for our 13-hour trip. Actually, a wrong turn
heading out of Nashville added an hour to our journey, but we made it
through Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Orlando without another hitch.

Passing the last cattle ranches and orange groves about an hour before
dusk,
we entered the outskirts of Okeechobee on the lake's north shore and
easily
located the Pink Flamingo hotel on the main drag. Scattered around the
parking lot we spied several bass boats with their orange umbilical cords
snaking over to electric outlets, sunburned men working on tackle or
unloading tow vehicles with out-of-state license plates. I remembered Moe
having said there was to be a BASS federation tournament on the lake this
weekend, but I'd forgotten that they were launching out of near-by
Okee-tanie Marina.

Moe had been catching a ton of small bass in the past few weeks and had
also
located some big ones deep in cover. He emailed us to bring plenty of soft
plastics -- worms, flukes, Senkos and such -- as we would be pitching in
heavy grass. The standard colors, he advised, were junebug, red shad and
watermelon. That was sound advice, as probably 90 percent of the bass we
caught the next two days hit those lures. We had spooled up our reels with
heavy superlines -- PowerPro, Spider Wire, and Fire Wire, in preparation
for
battles with big bass buried deep in the slop. Mod also said we bring a
spinnerbaiting rod as a backup, plus a spinning rod with light line for
the
canal. Just to be safe, Justin and I each trucked in six rigs and 100
pounds
of tackle, of which we used less than a pound. Fortunately, Moe had plenty
of storage for rods, tackle bags, rain gear and snacks on his Blazer (see
http://moebassguide.com/rates.html).

We got our first look at the lake, walked out on a fishing pier, commented
on the amber-colored water and watching some nice crappie and bream being
caught.
And we pumped Moe, the native guide, for information. What kind of animal
made that noise? What is that plant called? How deep is this channel, and
how far out is that island? Moe's answers were short and sweet: bird;
weed;
deep; a ways. We concluded that he saves most of his guide lore for paying
customers.

Once we dragged all the information we could out of Moe, he drove us down
to
the Okee-tanie marina at the mouth of the Kissimmee River where we would
be
launching the next day. This is one of the finest launch areas I've ever
seen; tackle shop, restaurant, three excellent, wide ramps with plenty of
courtesy docking, a weigh-in area with results board and bleachers and a
water-slide to return bass to the lake after weighing.

This, by the way, is where we will be holding the ROFB Southern Classic
next
April. After a quick walk-around, we strolled over to Lightsey's
Restaurant.
After fresh clams appetizers, Moe and I tackled heaping plates of
delicious
fried 'gator tail nuggets, and Justin kept our waitress busy replenishing
his plate of fried catfish fillets. As we ate, we made our plans for the
following day - we would hit King's Bar first off and then let the fish
and
wind determine if we would either circle the "island," move back into the
thick weed flats, or fish closer to the river's mouth.

The wind was blowing steadily out of the north as we began our drift along
some grassy edges. Before long, Justin took the day's first bass on a
buzzbait. We also tried soft plastics and spinnerbaits in the pre-dawn
light, but we weren't getting any other takers, so we then moved over to a
spawning area thick with submerged weeds. Moe urged us to try soft
plastics,
but I wanted to catch a good spinnerbait bass and Justin stuck with his
buzzbaits. Finally Moe decided he would have to persuade us by example.
Picking up his spinning rod with an 8-inch junebug trick worm behind a
1/16-ounce sinker, he plucked three small-to-medium bass out of the
hydrilla
in about ten minutes. Then he hooked a good fish that swung around the
front
of the boat and headed for open water. Moe brought the fish up close to
the
boat where Justin could get a good look at it, and when he did he started
scrambling for the net. Moe, having gotten what he wanted out of the
fight,
shook the fish loose while Justin stood there with his jaw dropped. From
the
back of the boat, I complemented Moe on his quick-release of a large
bowfin,
but when he could speak, he declared that what he clearly saw had to have
been an 8-pound bass. He couldn't believe we had lost that bass, but Moe
explained that he really wasn't going after small bass, and if he hung a
good one he would bring it on into the boat.

After that, both Justin and I became soft plastic converts and used them
exclusively the rest of the morning. The wind became a problem, though,
making it difficult to drop the baits down into the gaps between weeds, so
Moe motored us back around to The Pass between the Kissimmee River and
Buckhead Ridge. For the next five hours we fished Zoom watermelon/red
fleck
flukes, June bug worms, and Secret Weapon spinnerbaits over eelgrass,
pepper
grass, shrimp grass, among and along the edges of bulrushes, and then deep
back into the grass fields. Everywhere we went we caught (and missed) bass
ranging up to three pounds. I hook but lost at least two bass that were
bigger than that, but for some reason the larger bass weren't cooperating.
(We even tried a couple of Chuck Woolery's spring-loaded topwater baits --
but only after making sure no other bass anglers were in the area.) The
first day's total was somewhere between 40-50 bass boated - but still not
the one or two that we had driven 900 miles to catch.

Before dark we returned to the ramp so we could do a little repair work to
Moe's trailer lights (still showing the effects of the wreck he had a
couple
months back on a rain-slicked highway). We cleaned up and then headed into
town to the Golden Corral for an excellent buffet supper.

Friday morning we started out a little later, Justin and I having
discovered
that pre-dawn fishing on Okeechobee results in many more bites from
mosquito
than from bass. We drove over to the east side of lake, between Henry
Creek
lock and J&S lock, and put in on a small ramp in the rim canal just south
of
the J&S lock. We fished a little as we waited for the lock to clear, and
then locked through into the lake, about six feet above the canal level.

We passed rock walls that begged for an early morning buzzing and ran out
a
boat lane through the weeds to a broad expanse of emergent weeds
(bulrushes,
arrowhead and spikerush, mainly) floating vegetation (big lily pads and
little dollar pads, with lots of cabbage and water cress) over eelgrass
and
hydrilla. In a few areas we could run a spinnerbait (and in fact Justin
picked up the biggest bass of the morning on one, I think), but where Moe
had found big bass was back in the slop where flukes and worms worked
best.
Although the number of bass we caught back in there was decent (about 20
in
three hours), we decided to try our luck back in the rim canal.

Before going back through the J&S lock, Moe stopped to let us work over
one
concrete retaining wall beside the dredged area. Like many other areas,
this
looked so "bassy" that we were surprised to not pick up a single fish in
the
fifteen minutes we stayed there. Back in the rim canal, we took a break
for
sodas, hot dogs, and boiled peanuts at a lakeside bar, and then we ran
north
a short ways to a shelf that had produced for Moe earlier. We caught more
small and medium bass on the west side and then trolled across to the
levee
where the drop was faster but vegetation more sparse. Failing there, we
reeled in and headed on up to more promising-looking banks. From time to
time, alligators would surface to eyeball us and then slowly sink back out
of sight. Just after we fished one stretch, a 12-foot 'gator shot out of
the
bulrushes right behind us and launched itself into the water amid much
froth, churn, and commotion. I tried to get Justin to toss his buzzbait
back
there, but he wasn't too eager to tie into an animal that size while
standing only a foot from the canal's surface.

On the north corner of one pocket, a big bass slurped up my 8-inch
watermelon Zoom trick worm. I felt the thump and reared back, my rod
arching
back toward the water as the line sliced to the right. I had a real good
fish on, and my initial hook-set hadn't fazed it a bit, nor moved it away
from the bulrushes. The fish cut right and circled a lone clump of rushes
as
I kept my rod high and light tight, trying to pull the bass back around or
bend the rushes down so it could swim out into deeper water. I think I
succeeded only in cinching it up into the root ball, where it tugged and
then worked the hook loose before we could swing the boat back up so Moe
could get at it. We don't know how big that bass was, none of us having
laid
eyes on it, but it sure felt like a good fish to me -- considerably bigger
than several 7-pounders I've caught.

We did get to see a monster bass that attacked Justin's buzzbait an hour
or
so later. Justin had been experimenting with several lures and switched
back
to his favorite buzzbait as thick clouds drifted over and rain showers
swept
by. We had seen reeds being knocked about by big-shouldered bass in the
three-to-four foot deep weed line, but we had only caught a few 10- to
15-inchers. On one cast to the weed line, Justin's bait was followed by a
huge wake. Moe and I happened to both be looking right at the charging
fish,
and what Moe saw was a gaping mouth big enough to fit both fists into,
closing fast on the bait. The fish stopped short, and Justin dropped his
rod
tip and killed the retrieve, allowing the bait to flutter down where the
fish slashed at it. The instant Justin felt a jerk or slap, he set the
hook,
but it came shooting out of the water and flew past my head. The fish's
back
was entirely out of water, and I could clearly see the dorsal fins and
tail
of a bass easily in the 14-pound range. I finished reeling in my worm and
cast it to where the fish dove out of sight, but I was rewarded with no
thump on the follow-up lure. We stayed there another five minutes, tossing
worms, crankbaits, spinnerbaits, and buzzbaits, but had to finally admit
defeat as lightning flashed and thunder rolled in and an approaching storm
drove us off the water.

Over lasagna and stuffed pork chops at Mama Flagos' Italian restaurant, we
recapped our visit. Two days of fishing had produced about 80 bass. We
fished a lot of typical Okeechobee areas, and both Justin and I had our
shots at wall-hangers. Moe was an excellent host and guide, teaching us
what
we needed to do to get the right lures in the right places, and putting up
with us as we tried lures and retrieves better suited to our upland
reservoirs and rivers. The weather cooperated, too -- 80-85 degrees in the
day, dropping to the upper 60's at night, and the bugs weren't bad at all,
either. No one fell overboard. No one ended up with a hook embedded in his
skull or muscle, and we took away memories of a lifetime, for which we
thanked Moe.

Our trip down and back to Tennessee gave Justin and me a chance to get
better acquainted, swap fish tales, compare notes, and plan future
outings.
As usually happens when ROFB members get together, we agreed this had been
a
great experience, and we're both looking forward to seeing a crowd of us
there in April. One thing we can tell you.. Unlike earlier ROFB events,
the
chances are high that every participant will weigh in a limit each day,
and
chances are that someone will have to bring in a 10-pound-plus bass to
take
big fish honors. You won't want to miss it! Look for details in the coming
months from Moe or Doc (the tin boat king).
--
TNBass
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