VB BASS HUNTER: May 2013

I want to begin by apologizing to all of you out there that have taken the time to check my blog and been disappointed to find no new information. I believe that I last left you prior to heading south for a bass trip in sunny Florida. So I am going to try to catch you all up on the last month or so of what has been going on in my fishing exploits.

FLORIDA -
As stated before I took a trip with a couple of good buddies to South Florida to do some bass fishing. The plan was to fish Okeechobee on Friday, a Private Peacock Bass pit on Saturday and the Everglades on Sunday. It was to be an full weekend of nothing but fun fishing. Unfortunately as is the case with any outdoor activity mother nature has to play her part. She did not look down kindly upon us. Friday was a wash. A massive frontal system moved through early early Friday morning and severe thunderstorms and heavy rain canceled our trip. I was bummed, as I was really looking forward to fishing the Big-O. We did get to head out to fish for peacock bass and large mouth on Saturday. The weather from the day before again played a role in our success. Peacock bass like warm water. One of the reasons that the only place in the USA you will find them is South Florida. They are aggressive reaction strike fish, that prefer water temperatures north of 75 degrees. When we launched the boat the water temp was 70. Just the weekend before the guide told us the water temp was near 79-80. This drastic change in the water temperature made the fishing slower than we had hoped. However we did catch fish. I landed 2 peacocks and 3 largemouth in about 9 hours of fishing. As a group we ended up with 8 peacocks and about 10 largemouth. I fished primarily top water, a zara spook. But also threw a jerk bait, spinner bait and poppar.

Sunday we headed out to the never ending Everglade water ways. The channel we fished may have been 100 yards wide and went on as far as your eye could see. We switched up from mostly fast reaction strike fishing to slower soft plastics, jigs, flipping and pitching. The occasionally spinner and chatter baits and a frog in the morning. We caught a lot of fish. Too many to count. Most of them were small but it was still a blast. This was a lot my first real attempt at flipping lilies and grass, which too some time to learn but was great in the end.

At the end of the trip my shoulder, wrist, and hand were sore from fishing for 18+ hours over the course of two days. But it left me hungry for more fishing and wanting to go back down when mother nature could cooperate with us. We came to find out that was the first rain they had in the area for 40+ days. Just our luck. Our guides were great. They put us on fish and made sure that we had an enjoyable time. We booked through Bassonline.com for anyone that was thinking about the trip. It was affordable and fun. I highly recommend it.

LATE APRIL EARLY MAY -
This is a really busy time of year for me with work. I came back from Florida and hit the ground running with work. I work in landscaping and since spring wanted to delay its arrival for as long as possible, when it showed up it seems everything grew over night. That being said I have not had the opportunity to do as much fishing as I would have liked. I have only been able to take the boat out once. All my other trips have been an hour here or there bank fishing on some local ponds. I have had luck on soft plastics texas rigged. I have also had some luck catching a few spawning bass. My buddy and I had a really good day out on the boat the one time we took it out. He landed 9 I landed 6 all but 3 of them were over 2 lbs. I am not sure if it was the pond we fished, the moon phases, or just one of those days but I hope to have many more like it. I posted some pictures below of some of the fish I have caught over the last few weeks. Since I am trying to play catch up I am not going to go into too many details. I do plan on being better with my post. I apologize for my little break.