A new boat ramp just reopened to the public on Lake Hatchineha. From the looks of things they’re still doing some renovations but it’s always nice to have another ramp. There’s plenty of parking and you don’t have to drive down a dirt road meaning you don’t have to clean off all the dirt on your boat when you get home.
I had to check it out today and fished Hatchineha. Much to my surprise, I didn’t catch a single fish out of the reeds. Instead, I caught about a dozen fish doing everything under the sun. The fish were definitely biting, but nothing over 2.5 pounds. I caught my first and biggest fish about 30 minutes into the day flippin in Kissimmee grass with a junebug silver Gitem Sugar. I’ve been flippin a lot lately so I broke out a green pumpkin chatterbait with a swim senko trailer and caught a bunch swimming it next to pads. I then checked out the inside of the weed line and caught 3 fish on a frog.
All in all, I like having the new ramp and will keep it in the rotation. It’s free and open all day every day. What more could you ask for? View Larger Map
BassOnline.com is Florida Fishing largest Freshwater Guide Service, specializing in Florida bass fishing in many Florida lakes, canals and rivers for largemouth and peacock bass.
To learn more about Florida bass fishing, visit Bass Fishing Blog
LAKE WALES, Fla. (Jan. 26, 2009) – Boater Jeremy Smith of Plant City, Fla., won the Walmart Bass Fishing League Gator Division tournament on the Kissimmee River Saturday with a five-bass catch weighing 28 pounds, 12 ounces. The victory earned Smith $4,271 and placed him one step closer to qualifying for the Clarks Hill Lake Regional Championship in Martinez, Ga., Oct 15-17, where he could ultimately win a new Ranger boat and a Chevy truck.
“Watching the Weather Channel I knew it had been cold all week. I just had a thought in my mind that the fish would pull out in deeper water,” said Smith. “When I practiced, I stuck with that idea that fish were going to be deeper and discovered that Friday before the tournament.”
Smith caught a total of eight fish between takeoff hours and lunchtime and kept the best five, culling only once. Smith said he knew that Saturday was forecast to be a nice day, and by mid-morning the weather had improved.
“I didn’t have to fish anymore, so I put my pole down and tried to help my co-angler catch his limit,” Smith said. The winning fish were caught on a Rat-L-Trap and a Yo-Zuri lipless crankbait.
“I normally don’t catch that much weight the day of takeoff. But I ran up to Lake Toho and fished in a new place. An angler before me caught a 9-pound, 2-ounce bass, and I thought he had caught the big one. But I fished it for a while longer and caught a bigger one,” Smith said.
Rounding out the top five boaters are Kyle Walters of Palm Bay, Fla. (five bass, 26-13, $2,136); John Stahl of Wesley Chapel, Fla. (four bass, 20-08, $1,424); Micah Silverman of Orlando, Fla. (five bass, 14-09, $997) and Miles Burghoff of Saint Cloud, Fla. (five bass, 14-06, $854).
Smith took home the Boater Division Big Bass award, earning $4,271 for a 9-pound, 11-ounce bass he caught.
Scott Kerslake of Henderson, N.C., earned $2,136 as the co-angler winner Saturday thanks to five bass weighing 15 pounds, 12 ounces.
Rounding out the top five co-anglers are Johnny Dease of Orlando, Fla. (five bass, 12-04, $1,068); Chris Youngblood of Dunedin, Fla. (five bass, 10-13, $712); Douglas Conklin of Harmony, Fla. (five bass, 8-13, $498) and David Lepsic of Haines City, Fla. (five bass, 8-07, $427).
Kerslake earned $2,136 as the co-angler Big Bass winner after catching a 15-pound, 12-ounce bass.
The next Gator Division event will be held on the Harris Chain of Lakes in Tavarez, Fla., Feb 14.
The top 40 boaters and 40 co-anglers in each of the BFL’s 28 divisions at the end of the season advance to a no-entry-fee Regional Championship where boaters fish for a new Ranger boat and a Chevy truck and co-anglers fish for a new Ranger boat. Seven regional championships will each send six boaters and six co-anglers to the no-entry-fee Walmart BFL All-American presented by Chevy, which features a $1 million purse and a top award of $140,000 in the Boater Division and $70,000 in the Co-angler Division. Anglers who compete in all five regular-season events within a division but do not advance to a Regional Championship are eligible to compete in the Chevy Wild Card, which will also send six boaters and six co-anglers to the All-American for a total of 48 boaters and 48 co-anglers advancing through BFL competition.
In BFL competition, boaters supply the boat and compete from the front deck against other boaters. Co-anglers compete from the back deck against other co-anglers.
As the nation’s leading provider of affordable, close-to-home weekend tournaments, the BFL is widely credited with opening competitive bass fishing to the masses. It also serves as a steppingstone for anglers who wish to advance to the Stren Series and ultimately the FLW Tour – bass fishing’s most lucrative tournament circuit.
Total awards are based on a full field of 200 boats in every tournament.
Till next time tight lines and good fishing….
From Staff Writer Capt Todd Kersey (todd@bassonline.com)
BassOnline.com / 888-829-BASS
———————————————————————————————–
BassOnline.com is Florida Fishing largest Freshwater Guide Service, specializing in Florida bass fishing in the Florida lakes, canals and rivers.
To learn more about Florida bass fishing, visit Bass Fishing Blog
Norman, OK – When morning dawned on the final day of the inaugural PAA Series tournament on Lake Toho, Shaw Grigsby found himself with less than a pound lead over a charging Steve Kennedy. With conditions similar to the previous two days, cold and windy, the remaining anglers knew that each bite would be crucial if they were to write their name in the record books as the first Carrot Stix PAA Series champion.With the shallow spawning waters cooling to the mid 50s, Grigsby found that his spawning fish had pulled a vanishing act and he came to the scales the final day with only one fish weighing 1.50 pounds.
With the door open, Steve Kennedy brought in a respectable 11.36 pounds on Saturday to remain in second when the scales closed. Lurking near the top of the leader board since the opening day, Todd Faircloth finished in third, after a final day effort of 14.52 pounds.
But the day belonged to Brian Snowden who entered Saturday in 3rd place nearly four pounds out of the lead after a nine pound bite anchored his Friday limit. On the final day, Snowden’s 17.75 vaulted him to the top of the leader board, where he stayed. With the win, Snowden takes home a $40,000 Phoenix bass boat and $10,000 in cash.
Overall, many of the anglers were impressed with the number of quality bass Toho surrendered throughout the three day event. In what Steve Kennedy called, “The cold front of the century” for Florida, Snowden’s final weight of 52.44 pounds made the win even more impressive.
Followers of the 2008 Bassmaster Elite Series may remember that last year, Snowden had nearly a 10 pound lead in Florida on the Harris Chain heading into the final day, but blanked and finished a disappointing 2nd. There were no ill effects on Saturday as his come from behind victory made him the first winner on the Carrot Stix PAA Series.
Here is what Snowden and Kennedy had to say about their tournament performances:
Brian Snowden
“It was slow but steady today. I didn’t get a bite until about nine this morning and then I ended up catching two real quick and then caught a 6 ½ pounder to fill my limit out by about two in the afternoon.
“I caught every fish on an XCalibur Xr75 rattle bait in 6 to 8 feet of water fishing the hydrilla and eel grass in Toho. I found the bite a little bit in practice and then when it got colder during the tournament, I decide to just stay out there and throw the rattle bait. Each day I’d get about seven bites and have five to six keepers.
“Even though they were spraying grass on Toho, they hadn’t sprayed the area that I was fishing in recently so it actually probably helped the way that I was fishing. The key was to find the grass that was still kind of green. Some of the bass were post-spawn and some were pre-spawn, so I caught a little mixture of both.
“It’s really just a great honor to win the first PAA Series event. I think this is something that is going to be really great for the future of our sport so it’s an honor to be part of the PAA. To get the win in the first one is a great feeling. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the year and the growth of the PAA. It’s pretty exciting times for the anglers I think.”
Steve Kennedy
“This morning started out perfect. I went running down to my trap fish and I fired out there on my first cast and caught a bass outside of where I was expecting to catch one. When I got over to the little edges of the grass, I called my shots three casts in a row. My cameraman said that I was ‘Babe Ruth’en them.’ I had another little sweet spot off shore and it took me three casts to catch my fifth one. Within 15 minutes I had a limit.
“I fished my trap for about an hour after than without a bite and went to my flipping stuff and the little ones were biting good. I probably had eight bites in the first hour and I had one big bite and she shook her head and came off so I don’t know how big it was. As cold as it was, they were just really finicky.
After that, I went all day without a big bite and was only able to cull up a few ounces. The morning was as good as it gets. Yesterday morning I did the same thing – it just so happened that they were four pounders then.
There were several other boats that had worked through the general area and I think we just beat them up. I was throwing the KVD special, the Strike King Red Eye Sexy Shad – I watched him do it on TV down here. When I came down here I thought, ‘If Kevin can catch them on it, I can do it.’ It almost worked out. I was flipping a Kinami Palm Tree and a Beaver both in black and blue color.
I didn’t win it but it worked out pretty well for the amount that I practiced. I put in Monday at one in the afternoon and found those fish around three. I also went out Tuesday around ten in the morning just looking for a flipping bite and I didn’t practice Wednesday.
“Overall, it was pretty awesome and I really hope this turns out to be something big.”
Todd Faircloth
“I started out today with a flipping rod and that’s what I did all day. I had a limit by around eight this morning and caught a ton of fish today. I just only caught one big one right at the end of the day and I think the bigger one started biting later. I probably caught 25 fish today. I caught more today than any other day.
“I had two patterns that I was working. One was fishing a Sebile Flat Shad in the hydrilla and the other one was flipping a Yamamoto creature in the gnarliest stuff I could find. It seemed like the hydrilla bite faded on me and the flipping bite got better as the tournament went on. With the exception of the first day, all my fish came from flipping.
I fished Toho the whole tournament but the fact that they were spraying the grass really didn’t affect me at all.
“Overall, I think it was a good start for the PAA organization. We had 147 guys there, guys from BASS, FLW, and some guys who don’t fish either. I think that overall it was ran really well and a good start.
Deer and coyote leave their tracks in the soft sand of what passes in Florida for hilly terrain.
Florida panthers have been known to do the same.
Thanks to a recent $38 million purchase of an interest in this mosaic of native Florida habitats and human-altered pastures, ditches and roads known as Hatchineha Ranch by The Nature Conservancy, panthers and other wide-ranging wildlife will continue to enjoy a nearly unbroken corridor between the Everglades and Central Florida and perhaps beyond.
The sale, announced just before Thanksgiving, stops plans to turn this 5,134-acre ranch at Polk County’s distant eastern boundary into a city-sized housing development.
That project, called Hatchineha Lakes, was headed for a public hearing in February before the County Commission.
That hearing won’t be necessary now, though county planners are still waiting for a letter formally asking that the project be withdrawn.
Keith Fountain, director of protection for the Florida Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, said the preservation of Hatchineha Ranch has been a high priority because of its location in the regional landscape.
“This is one of the last high biodiversity landscapes in Central Florida,” he said.
But to understand the importance of the deal, you have to zoom out far enough to see how this piece fits in the regional landscape.
a piece of the puzzle
The purchase not only completes a nearly continuous corridor of conservation lands around 6,665-acre Lake Hatchineha along the Polk-Osceola line, but it fills a gap in a wildlife corridor that reaches from the outskirts of Kissimmee to Lake Okeechobee and into the Everglades.
Think of a regional wildlife corridor as something akin to an interstate highway for everything from Florida panthers and black bears to migrating warblers and waterfowl.
Think of any barrier, such a new network of roads and fences that accompany new development, as something like having the road closed between two interchanges with no easy way to re-enter.
The importance of the corridor was described in a 2002 report prepared for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
The report said this area was an important link between the Avon Park Air Force Range and the Green Swamp, which was depicted as part of a more comprehensive statewide corridor system stretching all the way to the Florida Panhandle.
“Habitat within this linkage might also help support panther re-establishment in South-Central Florida in the future,” the report concluded.
years in the making
The Nature Conservancy’s success caps years of preservation efforts.
Once called Imagination Farms, the property topped the list of tracts Polk County sought to protect when the county’s environmentally sensitive lands referendum passed in 1994.
The Polk County’s Environmental Lands Program and the South Florida Water Management District unsuccessfully pursued its acquisition for years.
Fountain said the recently announced deal came as a result of a number of opportune circumstances.
For one thing, the state’s Florida Forever fund is temporarily tapped out because of the state budget crisis, so very little land is being purchased by state officials.
That means landowners interested in selling large tracts for conservation are turning to private groups such as the conservancy.
“There are more opportunities than we’ve ever seen before, but we’re only taking the cream of the crop,” he said.
There was another aspect that aided this deal, which is the cooperation of the owners, Hatchineha Ranch LLC of West Palm Beach.
“I can’t underestimate that this would not have been possible without the landowner’s cooperation,” he said.
Ernie Cox, one of the representatives for Hatchineha Ranch involved in the concept, agreed it was “a pretty creative deal.”
The deal worked this way: Hatchineha Ranch donated 1,130 acres to The Nature Conservancy, and the conservancy purchased a partial interest in the remaining 4,004 acres.
“I’m very excited to have been a part of it,” Cox sad.
rare habitat
He said the restoration of the site’s diverse habitat that includes scrub, flat woods, oak hammocks and extensive – 2,160 acres – wetlands.
Hatchineha Ranch contains an unusual habitat called cutthroat seeps that will be part of the master plan.
Cutthroat seeps are areas where groundwater seeps to the surface, characterized by the presence of cutthroat grass, a type of grass found only in a few scattered locations in Central and South Florida.
“This has the most immense area of cutthroat I’ve ever seen,” the conservancy’s Fountain said.
In fact, in some sections of the property, the cutthroat grass covers the ground everywhere you look.
At this point, there’s no timetable for the restoration, but work of this type typically takes years to plan and implement.
While the restoration is under way, the land will remain in private ownership.
Fountain said someday it is likely to be purchased by the government and become either an addition to the adjacent 8,250-acre Allen David Broussard Catfish Creek State Park or to land managed by the South Florida Water Management District.
[ Tom Palmer can be reached at tom.palmer@theledger.com or 863-802-7535. Read more views on the environment at environment.theledger.com.]
8 visitors online now 8 guests, 0 members Max visitors today: 9 at 02:10 am GMT+4 This month: 30 at 03-06-2010 03:16 pm GMT+4 This year: 30 at 03-06-2010 03:16 pm GMT+4 All time: 30 at 03-06-2010 03:16 pm GMT+4
