My Hawg on an Evening Stroll

Well, the cold front has moved in Central Florida with rain and colder temperatures. I’ve been stuck inside all day, so I decided to walk my secret farm pond down the street from my house at around 4:30 when the rain stopped. I threw out my green pumpkin chatterbait a few times and hooked into this hawg on the fourth cast. This little pond is phenomenal and I’m glad I was throwing 20 lb test. I go here to get confidence with new baits. 

I’d say this fish was about 26″ and filled out as much as a fish can in these parts so I think it weighed around 8 pounds. She looks like she’s getting ready to bed already. The photo doesn’t show it that well, but it was a thick fish. 

I gotta get a john boat to take out on this pond someday. I catch one about this size or larger about every 5 or 6 trips which typically runs about an hour at a time. It’s a great place to clear my head and catch some giants. This place makes me think I’m a bassin genius.

New Photo from the Triton Tournament

 

I got an email today from Frank Hays of Fishers of Men with a new photo of my team’s winning catch. The new photo replaces the one where I’m cropped out. Thanks Frank.

Holy Crap, My Partner and I Won the Triton Owner’s Tournament

Well, the sun shines on a dog’s ass every once in a while… my partner Walt (he’s a flippin fool and thinks he’s Denny Brauer) and I won the Triton Owner’s Tournament out of South Port on Toho this Saturday which was dang cold. I mean it was about 40 degrees and blowing 20 knots with water temps dropping to 60 from about 75 a few days before. Running 70 mph doesn’t help things either. All I gotta say is I’m gonna buy some more long johns and gloves with the money we won. I gotta stay out of Bass Pro Shops cause of my crack addictiion to fishing gizmos.

I just wish I didn’t get cropped out of the photo on the Fishers of Men site. I’m the guy you can half see on the right. The only reason I know that is because I was there. They did get a good photo of the tournament director although he’s in all the winning photographs.

We prefished Monday, Thursday, and Friday without too much success. We found some nice fish on Monday at the south end of Toho and caught about 15 pounds of fish in about 5 minutes with a chrome and black Xcalibur xr50 and left them alone after that. Thursday was the biggest waste of time. It was right when the cold front came in and the fish had lockjaw. I didn’t even get a nibble the entire day. I talked to a few other boats at the lakefront ramp and they didn’t catch anything either. It was like there was no fish on Toho (I know better but that’s what it seemed like). Friday was a bit warmer and the winds laid down a bit so my partner and I did some runnin. We fished Cypress, Hatchineha, and Kissimmee. I caught some fish in a bunch of areas but really didn’t catch anything over 2 pounds. The winds picked up and finished out the day cranking rip rap with a Threadfin colored Bandit Flat Maxx with a coffin lip. I caught about 8 fish in about an hour, but again they were are dinks.

I was pretty confident we could get a limit real quick, but wasn’t sure we could produce any big ones. The extreme weather made me feel a little at ease because the winning weight was probably going to be 13 to 15 pounds instead of 20. 

We got to our first spot after a bone chilling run and caught the first fish weighing about 1.5 pounds within a half hour throwing the Gitem Warlock in junebug. We caught our second fish weighing about the same at that spot right afterwards on a Gitem Sugar in Green Pumpkin and a junebug Zoom Centipede. I was starting to feel pretty good about weighing in at least 10 pounds and at least having a good showing. We moved to another spot and pulled in the biggest fish of the day weighing about 6 pounds. A couple casts later we caught another one about 3.5 pounds. We went another hour without catching anything so we moved to our third spot where we pulled in a 4, a 3, and some cull fish. By 11 am, we had our limit of 19 pounds. We ran around like crazy trying to cull some of the 1.5 and 2 pound fish but couldn’t buy a bite after that. 

After all, it is the famous Kissimme Chain where you normally need at least 20 pounds to have a chance and many of the heavy hitters from the chain were fishing the tournament. It turned out we didn’t need the extra weight and after the weigh in handled by the Fishers of Men, we won the event by a comfortable 5 pounds. 

All I can say is winning feels dam good. Everyone always asks you how you caught them afterwards and I just told everyone we were flippin mat. That’s my standard answer for everything. The guys in this tournament are good and I don’t want to give them any kind of advantage.

The day would have been complete if we won the Power Pole they were giving away in the raffle, but I’ll take the win any day of the week.

I was feelin like Ike in this video after the win.

Understanding Sonar

I’ve been messing around with my Lowrance LCX-28C HD for a few months now and it’s one handy gizmo. Besides helping me find fish, it allows me to run pretty much wide open before the sun comes up with the maps and trails it provides. It saves my hot spots and records the time of day, water temp, depth, etc. when I record it. There’s also an accurate measure of my boat speed through the GPS. Yup, I can’t imagine going fishing without one.

While I believe I have a basic understanding of this machine, there’s a lot more info on the Lowrance that I could be paying attention to. That’s when I ran across Doc Bruce Samson’s Hightech Fishing site. Holy smokes, I didn’t realize there’s so much info on this thing. 

If you own a Lowrance and think you understand this machine, I’d take a look at Doc’s site. I think you’ll think otherwise once you read through his explanations on the Lowrance.

I’ve been looking at the Side Scan Sonar from Hummingbird, but now I think I need to understand what I have first.

Shallow Crankin Timber on Lake Susan

I spent a few hours on the Clermont Chain today and found some nice fish on Lake Susan. I concentrated on laydowns that extended out into deeper water with a Rapala DT Fat in the Parrot color. The extra buoyancy you get from this balsa crankbait made it a lot easier to swim through the timber in the areas I’ve lined on the map. The winds were howling out of the south and Lake Susan was one of the few places you could get out of the wind. It just so happens some nice fish were hanging around here as well. I caught a 5 and a bunch of fish between 2.5 lbs and 3.5 lbs.. I thought today would be a good day since there’s a cold front coming in this evening with temperatures dropping from a comfortable 80 degrees to a high of 66 degrees. Water temp was in the low 70’s but I’m sure it’ll be much lower after this cold front passes. Hopefully the water temp will drop quickly and stabilize so we can start seeing some spawning when we get a warm up.

download pdf: Clermont Chain Map

Some Infamous Spots That Produce Giant Bass on the Harris Chain

Captain Mo from the Bassholes forum let me know about a few spots on the Harris Chain that’s reputed to hold some giant fish. One is the Gator Hole which everyone knows about located on the northwest end of Lake Eustis. It’s a giant hole that can produce some of the biggest bass on the chain at the right times.

The other spot is the old clay mining ditch on west shore of Lake Harris that ranges in depths of 15 ft to 17 ft of water with lots of shell beds scattered throughout the area. This spot sounds like a perfect place for the carolina rig or a deep diver in firetiger for pre and post spawners.

I’ll be checking out both these spots in the next couple of weeks and will report if these spots live up to their reputation.

I’ll also be checking some of the canals off Beauclair and the Apopka Beauclair Canal.

My Next Tournament Will Be the Triton Owner’s Tournament

 

The next tournament I’ll be fishing in will be the Triton Owner’s Tournament on Toho hosted by Advanced Marine and Fishers of Men out of the Southport Ramp on November 22nd. I’ve already paid the entry fee and have some fish located so it should be a fun event. I’ll be fishing it with my buddy Walt on the Advanced Marine Team out of his 2009 Triton 20 X3. All I can say is that this boat is fast, real fast.

If you’d like to fish this team tournament, find a buddy and call Joe Clements at 866-604-2628. You can pay the $100 and optional $20 for big fish at the ramp.

Final Results from the 2008 Toho Challenge

My New Secret Weapon for Toho

I just got the new 7/8 oz Rapala Clackin Rap in the mail today and I’m sure it’s gonna be one of my favorites for the Kissimmee Chain and just about everywhere else around here. I got the white with blue back since most of the shad on Toho have the blue back on them. 

I’ve been having much better luck with the Xcalibur xr75 One Knocker in the Foxy Shad color than chrome or gold rattle baits. For some reason they seem to like the white with blue back on the Kissimmee Chain. You’d think the chrome or gold would work best, but from my experience, the white with blue back is best.

The sound the new Rapala Clackin Rap makes is really unique and dam loud… almost too loud. I bet the fish will be going crazy on this bait for a while because they haven’t heard this sound before. The sound it makes has a lower pitched rattle that should be heard from further distances. Anyone who knows anything about how sound waves travel will tell you that lower pitched sounds are not as directional and can be heard well from more places than higher pitched sounds that are more directional.

Also, no other rattle bait on the market has a holographic foil which gives some flash but more white than silver, nor does any of them come with VMC hooks. Anyone who’s fished these baits knows that the fish can shake’m pretty easily and the VMC hooks should help alleviate this issue.

You can be sure that I’ll be throwing this bait on a in lots of places in the coming months on my 7′ Heavy Shimano Clarus, Shimano Citica E, and 20 lb Suffix Siege.. especially around the hydrilla on Toho.

watch video: Rapala Clackin Rap

FLW Pro Chad Morgenthaler Wins The 2008 Toho Challenge

Chad Morgenthaler and Matt Herren recently won the 2008 Toho Challenge and here’s a recount of his winning strategy of flipping the Sweet Beaver to victory from chadmorgenthaler.com

After winning this tournament twice in three years, let me start by saying I have a warm and fuzzy feeling for the event.    This year the format changed.  Instead of a Pro Am the tournament is now a team format.  It really didn’t matter to me.  I’ve got plenty of friends who love to fish Florida lakes that I can call in a pinch. 

Matt Herren and I started practice on Sunday November 2nd.  It was a little hard to focus after traveling 18 hours the day before, but we managed and were just happy to be on Toho.

Matt and I love to flip, so our game plan going into practice was to remain focused and just have fun with it. Persistence paid off and we were able to locate a few key areas holding quality fish that we leaned on heavily during competition.     

On day one our plan was simple, to catch everything that bit and stay focused fishing.   We were pleasantly surprised that within the first hour we bagged a 15-pound limit, which at the end of the day landed us in 8th place.

On the second day of competition the bites did not come as fast and furious as the previous day.  We adjusted and move around to secure a 17-pound limit, which move us into 3rd place sealing a spot in the Top 10.

The final day of competition the weights were zeroed and everyone started from scratch.   We elected to fish in an area that we located during practice on Kissimmee Lake.  We were optimistic that if things went well we had a real chance of winning.  We fished one area the entire day catching a lot of numbers, but we were minus the Kissimmee giant that we felt we needed to win. 

Weigh-in proved to be a real nail bitter with the weights lower than the previous days and to close to call. The majority of teams had struggled through out the day trying to locate quality fish.  Our final day weight of 12.50 was just enough to inch out my old friend Terry Scroggins’ team by a little over an ounce to clinch the win for us.  I’m certain that sometime in the future he’ll pay me back, but right now I’m going to bask in the victory.

Our main “go to” baits for the event were Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver in Christmas Pumpkin and Hematoma.  We paired these baits on a 1 3/8-ounce Tungsten weight with 65-pound Spider Wire Ultra Cast braid sand 7′ 11″ heavy flipping sticks.    

The Great Outdoors Days capped off with the Angling Against Cancer Benefit Tournament on Sunday.  I was paired with a longtime supporter, Nancy Smith.  Nancy also competed in the Lake Toho Challenge and finished 12th.  We had a great day and caught fish a lot of different ways, but were only able to weigh-in a little over 9-pounds. 

A special thanks to Terry Seagraves who runs a great event and supports a much needed cause.