The Florida Fishing Experts
Specializing in Florida Bass Fishing on all of the Florida Freshwater Lakes.

By Rob Newell - 29.Jan.2010

With sunny skies, light winds and temperatures near 80 degrees, pros were able to sight fish Okeechobee’s bass as they have done the last few days.

The leader board remained mostly unchanged with the exception of pro J. Todd Tucker who rocketed into the top 5 with the day’s biggest catch: 21 pounds, 9 ounces.

Debary, Florida’s John Cox widened his lead to nearly 11 pounds with a respectable 14-pound, 2-ounce catch, while Martin, Gagliardi and Mann also stayed inside the top-5 cut.

A common theme among the leaders today was that the large females, which had been easy to entice the last two days, had gotten a little smarter and were now harder to catch. The “caught her on the first cast” days maybe over as pros are now having to work big fish longer to get them to bite – if they bite at all.

Cox was one of the first to say that the low hanging fruit of the last two days has mostly been plucked. Some of the females left in his area tried his patience today and he had to rely on buck bass for his catch. His three-day total now stands at 62-1.

“In retrospect, maybe I should not have caught the males so fast today,” Cox said. “I got nervous and I got in a hurry and a started catching the males just to get something in the box. Instead, I probably should have waited them out a little longer and let the females get in there and lock on little better before taking the males.

“Sometimes taking the males too fast makes the females lose interest and they kind of disappear and that’s what happened today. I got bogged down on a couple of big ones that would not bite and they eventually left, probably because I had already caught the males.”

Martin holding the No. 2 spot
National Guard pro Scott Martin held his second place position today with a 12-pound, 4-ounce catch for a two-day total of 51-6.

During the morning hours, Martin has been taking advantage of a small window of time when the big females will actively feed. He has been catching these bigger fish on a Lake Fork Live Magic Shad and a Reaction Innovations Trixie Shark.

“For about an hour, right at first light, those big fish will crush anything that comes around them – they’re real defensive,” Martin explained. “But once the sun gets up, they lock on the beds and become uninterested in eating. So I’ve been getting that big bite early, but this morning was a train wreck. I just kept missing them. It’s like they were hitting the bait with their mouth closed, not really eating it.

“After missing all those fish, I started to kind of panic and started catching the males off beds, just to have something to weigh in,” he said. “But, like I said before, I don’t like removing those males because they help keep the females around. Once you start taking the males out of an area on this lake, the females move on somewhere else.”

Gagliardi still clings to third
Chevy pro Anthony Gagliardi sight-fished 13-13 today to hold onto his third place spot with a three-day total of 49 pounds, 8 ounces.

Gagliardi had two mishaps that made him cringe today. One was a 4- to 5-pound female that he accidentally snagged. Per FLW rules, any sight bass that is hooked outside the mouth must be released immediately.

“I haven’t done that in years,” Gagliardi said. “And that’s one of the main reasons I use a light colored bait when sight-fishing. I want to see the fish eat it and make sure she has it. Well, I saw her eat it, but when I set the hook, it ended up hooking her under the gill. Sometimes bucks will actually bite again after being snagged like that, but females usually won’t.”

His other frustration came with finding a 6-pounder on the bed with just 20 minutes left in the fishing day.

“It was one of those deals,” Gagliardi said. “She was getting hotter with every pitch and was about to commit to the bait, but I just ran out of time. Another five or ten minutes and I would have caught her.”

Tucker busts 21-9 for fourth
J. Todd Tucker of Moultrie, Ga., brought in the biggest limit of day three – 21-9 – to move into fourth place with a three-day total of 48 pounds, 1 ounce.

Tucker has been throwing topwaters and sight-fishing for the last two days, but today he did something a little different in his technique that made a huge difference in his catch.

“I’ve mostly been sight-fishing out in front of the thick cane and reeds,” Tucker explained. “But today I got my push pole out and pushed back into those thick reeds. And wherever there was on little hole or small open spot back behind that cane, there was a big one on bed. And since there’s been no pressure back in those places, the females were a lot easier to catch.”

Mann in fifth

Tom Mann, Jr., scored yet another FLW Series top 5 with a three-day total of 47 pounds, 13 ounces.
Mann continued to milk his primary areas with his favorite Florida bait: a 5-inch Senko in a watermelon red color.

The Senko produced a five bass limit for 13-13 today giving Mann his fifth top-5 qualification in the last 12 months in FLW Outdoors competition.

Rounding out the top-10 pros in the FLW Eastern Series on Lake Okeechobee after day three:

6th: Scott Canterbury of Springville, Ala., three-day total of 47-5, $8,500
7th: Randall Tharp of Gardendale, Ala., three-day total of 46-10, $17,006
8th: Bob Izumi of Milton, Ont., three-day total of 44-9, $11,252
9th: Bobby Lane of Lakeland, Fla., three-day total of 44-9, $9,788
10th: Nicolas Supik of Natrona Heights, Pa., three-day total of 44-2, $6,500

Day four of the FLW Series Eastern on Lake Okeechobee will begin Saturday at 7:00 a.m. at C. Scott Driver Park.

Thanks Guys we look forward to fishing with you.

Till next time tight lines and good fishing….
From Staff Writer Capt Brett Isackson (bretti@bassonline.com)
BassOnline.com / 888-829-BASS

Today I had the pleasure of taking out repeat customer George Flemming in the Everglades for a full day of action pack fishing.

We started out out throwing Senkos and Shaky heads on the bottom and catching a few bass,  as the day went on we notice the fish moving location. With the full the next day, the bass started showing up on the there beds.We search around till we  finaly found one that would eat.

Till next time tight lines and good fishing….
From Staff Writer Capt Brett Isackson (bretti@bassonline.com)
BassOnline.com / 888-829-BASS

OKEECHOBEE, Fla. (Jan. 27, 2010) – John Cox of Debary, Fla., landed five bass weighing 25 pounds, 1 ounce Wednesday to lead day one of the FLW Series Eastern Division tournament on Lake Okeechobee. He holds a 3-pound, 10-ounce lead in the tournament.
   “I started on one fish in the morning and it ate my first pitch,” said Cox, who is fishing in his first FLW Series event. “I caught two other 3-pounders and a few other nice ones about 11 o’clock. After that, I just went around and tried to find new areas.”
   Cox said he was sight fishing for larger bass and attributes his success on the first day of competition to being in the right place at the right time.
   “I’m going to do the same thing on Thursday, but I’m going to start in a different area and try to put 15 or 20 pounds together,” Cox said.
   Cox said his 3-pound, 10-ounce lead isn’t enough to make him comfortable after just one day of fishing on Lake Okeechobee.
   “That’s nothing out here,” Cox said. “You need a 10-pound lead out here to have any kind of cushion.”
   Anthony Gagliardi of Prosperity, S.C., trails Cox in the No. 2 spot with five bass weighing 21-7.
   Rounding out the remainder of the top-10 pros after day one at Lake Okeechobee are:

      3rd: Chad Grigsby, Maple Grove, Minn., five bass, 21-6
      4th: National Guard pro Scott Martin, Clewiston, Fla., five bass, 21-4
      5th: Tom Mann Jr., Buford, Ga., five bass, 20-1
      6th: Robert Behrle, Hoover, Ala., five bass, 19-11
      7th: Koby Kreiger, Okeechobee, Fla., five bass, 18-11
      8th: Tony Chachere, Opelousas, La., five bass, 16-12
      9th: Randall Tharp, Gardendale, Ala., five bass, 16-8
      10th: Scott Canterbury, Springville, Ala., five bass, 16-7

Overall there were 664 bass weighing 1,486 pounds, 12 ounces caught by 154 pros Wednesday. The catch included 110 five-bass limits.
   In FLW Series competition, pros are competing for a top award of $50,000 plus valuable points in the hope of qualifying for a shot at the 2011 Forrest Wood Cup, the world championship of bass fishing.
   Scott Kerslake of Henderson, N.C., leads the Co-angler Division with four bass weighing 12-0 followed by Philip Jarabeck of Lynchburg, Va., in second place with five bass weighing 11-8.
   The remainder of the top-10 co-anglers are:

      3rd: Dale Walker, Miami, Fla., five bass, 11-7
      4th: George Kapiton, Inverness, Fla., five bass, 11-6
      5th: Greg Schultz, Wayzata, Minn., five bass, 11-3
      6th: Robert Eid, Key West, Fla., five bass, 11-1
      7th: Frank Mackin, New Port Richey, Fla., five bass, 11-0
      8th: Jeff Cummins, Marion, Ohio, five bass, 10-14
      9th: Eugene Lewis, Saint Petersburg, Fla., five bass, 10-6
      10th: James Sharp, Leesburg, Ga., five bass, 10-5

Overall there were 371 bass weighing 607 pounds, 5 ounces caught by 117 co-anglers Wednesday. The catch included 32 five-bass limits.
   Co-anglers are competing this week for a Ranger 177TR with 90 horsepower engine as well as valuable points that could help them qualify for the 2011 Forrest Wood Cup.
   Anglers will take off from C. Scott Driver Park located at 10100 W. Hwy. 78 in Okeechobee at 7 each morning. Thursday’s and Friday’s weigh-ins will also be held at the marina beginning at 3 p.m. Saturday’s final weigh-in will be held at Gilbert Chevrolet Company located at 3550 Hwy. 441 S. in Okeechobee beginning at 4 p.m.

South American peacock bass are adjusting to suburban life in Florida (The Kansas City Star)

HOMESTEAD, Fla. | Brett Isackson was searching for a piece of the Amazon in the most unlikely of settings — behind a Bloomingdale’s store in a mall in a Miami suburb.
Standing in his bass boat in a canal, he was fishing for peacock bass — the freshwater fish most often associated with jungles, piranha-infested waters and countries such as Brazil.

Not the land of shopping malls, upscale neighborhoods and busy parks.
But ask Isackson, and he’ll tell you that the colorful peacock bass are almost at home in one setting as the other.

Oh, the Florida fish don’t grow nearly as large as their cousins of a different strain in the Amazon. And they aren’t as plentiful.

But since being stocked by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in the 1980s, they have built an impressive population and have created a multimillion dollar fishery.

Even in surprisingly tame settings, Isackson will remind you.

“Your readers are going to think you are making things up when you tell them we put in behind a Bloomingdale’s,” Isackson said with a laugh. “But a lot of these places down here where we fish for peacocks are surrounded by a lot of activity.

“We fish for them in the lakes at the Miami International Airport, the raceway (Homestead-Miami Speedway), and a lot of canals running through neighborhoods.

“The key is warm water. These peacocks can’t tolerate water temperatures much lower than the mid-60s. If they have good, warm water and a lot of forage, they do fine.”

The peacocks and many other fish ran out of warm water in early January, when a prolonged cold spell hit Florida. The peacock bass were among the many species that suffered losses.

As Isackson, a guide for the BassOnline Fishing Service, maneuvered his bass boat down the narrow canal, he was surrounded by reminders of the cold. Dead iguanas floated in the shallows. And dead fish floated on the surface and littered the bottom.

But there was plenty of life in the water, too. Schools of bright-orange Midas cichlids glowed in the clear water. And the peacock bass he was seeking were there, too.

No sooner had he announced, “We call this section Peacock Alley,” than he felt something jolt the gold Rapala he had just cast out.

The fish pulled hard, then burst to the surface and made an acrobatic leap. But it wasn’t long before Isackson had the fish in the boat and was admiring its beauty.

“Even these small ones will give you a fight,” he said as he tossed his catch back. “You’ll be fighting these fish and you’ll think you have something much bigger on. They’re like smallmouth bass on steroids.”

Isackson enjoyed plenty of those fights on a weekday last week. He and I caught 12 peacock bass in a variety of sizes and lost four others. We also landed several Oscars, cichlids that are popular with those who have aquariums.

Isackson used a tried-and-true pattern to catch the fish. He used a No. 7 gold Rapala and retrieved it with an erratic motion parallel to a rock ledge descending into the clear water. The closer to the wall, the better.

“They’ll get back in some of the holes and under some of the overhanging rocks,” said Isackson, 38, who lives in Davie, Fla. “They’re ambush feeders, a lot like a largemouth.”

Isackson said the fish he and his customers catch often run in the 1- to 3-pound range. But there are exceptions. A fisherman in his late 70s once caught a 7-pound peacock on a fly rod and a Clouser Minnow fly. The Florida state record is 9.08 pounds.

Isackson uses other common bass baits to lure the peacocks. He has caught fish on everything from topwater lures to spinnerbaits to Rat-L-Traps to Lucky Craft Pointer crankbaits.

“You never know where you’re going to find them,” Isackson said. “They aren’t too picky about where they’ll spawn.

“One time, I told a customer to pitch in on a baby crib that was down on the bottom. He did, and he caught a nice peacock.”

Experiences like that have created a rabid following for the exotic fish. Isackson laughed about the day he took a loyal customer out fishing.

“He rolled up his sleeve and showed me a tattoo of a peacock bass that he had gotten,” Isackson said.

After that brutal cold spell in early January, things are getting back to normal in southern Florida. The water temperature has climbed to 67 degrees, the fish are shaking out of their doldrums and Isackson is back in shorts, fishing for the peacock bass he loves.

“I’m sure the population took a hit with this cold weather,” he said. “But we’re seeing that plenty of fish survived, too.

“If the peacocks can pull off a good spawn, that would definitely help for the future.”