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#1
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Okeechobee Journal (long)
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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- www.secretweaponlures.com -------------------=- 0'))) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- |
#2
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Okeechobee Journal (long)
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#3
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Okeechobee Journal (long)
You kept us right with you, Joe. Thanks for letting us come along.
-- Bob Rickard www.secretweaponlures.com --------------------------=x O'))) "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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- www.secretweaponlures.com -------------------=- 0'))) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- |
#4
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Okeechobee Journal (long)
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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- www.secretweaponlures.com -------------------=- 0'))) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- |
#5
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Okeechobee Journal (long)
Geeze... let's move the tournament up a little. You know... like this
weekend??? Just kidding, but listening to those stories make me want ot be there NOW! Great writing there Joe, and I can't wait to see some pictures. You did take pictures didn't you??? "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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- www.secretweaponlures.com -------------------=- 0'))) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- |
#6
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Okeechobee Journal (long)
Joe, take photos? Charles you must be joking!
"Charles B. Summers" (Comcast) wrote in message ... Geeze... let's move the tournament up a little. You know... like this weekend??? Just kidding, but listening to those stories make me want ot be there NOW! Great writing there Joe, and I can't wait to see some pictures. You did take pictures didn't you??? "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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- www.secretweaponlures.com -------------------=- 0'))) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- |
#7
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Okeechobee Journal (long)
I made the mistake of waiting until we had a five pound bass to photograph,
so we ended up with just a few shots on the roll of film. I'm going to have to get out this weekend and catch some film-worthy fish before developing this roll. TNBass __________ "Dave Norton" wrote in message ... Joe, take photos? Charles you must be joking! "Charles B. Summers" (Comcast) wrote in message ... Geeze... let's move the tournament up a little. You know... like this weekend??? Just kidding, but listening to those stories make me want ot be there NOW! Great writing there Joe, and I can't wait to see some pictures. You did take pictures didn't you??? "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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- www.secretweaponlures.com -------------------=- 0'))) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- |
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Okeechobee Journal (long)
"TNBass" wrote in message
... I made the mistake of waiting until we had a five pound bass to photograph, so we ended up with just a few shots on the roll of film. I'm going to have to get out this weekend and catch some film-worthy fish before developing this roll. Sheesh!!! If I waited till I caught a 5 pound fish before I shot a picture I'ld post about one picture every third year. LOL. You got nothing to complain about. -- Bob La Londe Yuma, Az http://www.YumaBassMan.com ADD YOUR WEB LINK TO THE LINK INDEX ON MY SITE |
#9
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Okeechobee Journal (long)
Still tryin to catch my breath after the "read" g. But thanks for
takin me along! JK |
#10
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Okeechobee Journal (long)
Moe Conway!?!? That guy owes me money!
thanks for the great report Joe. I cant wait to fish with Moe again. Warren -- http://www.fishingworld.com/MesaTackleSupply/ http://www.outdoorfrontiers.com http://www.secretweaponlures.com http://warrenwolk.com/ http://www.tri-statebassmasters.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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- www.secretweaponlures.com -------------------=- 0'))) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- --- |
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