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.

by BASS Communications / BASS

Fish a tournament in Florida, and there are three names to watch, no matter the lake, season or weather: Chris Lane, Bobby Lane and Terry Scroggins. True to form, they finished one, two, three at the Bassmaster Southern Open on Lake Okeechobee this week.
   Chris Lane picked up his second BASS tournament victory and second at the Big O with 41 pounds, 2 ounces over three days. He also won the Southern Open here four years ago. Not so ironically, Scroggins finished second. Bobby did not fish that one.
   But Chris’ day didn’t start so well. He and brother Bobby were staying at the same place and had parked side by side. When Bobby left for launch, a few minutes before Chris, he accidentally hit the driver-side door of Chris’ truck with his boat trailer.
   “My boat wasn’t going anywhere,” Bobby said, “so I stepped on the gas. Then I heard a terrible cracking sound.”
   It was the sound of a truck door being nearly ripped from the frame. It had to seem a very bad omen to Chris. Fortunately, he didn’t let it get him down. Once on the water, things settled in, and he found a strong bite on a Gambler Cane Toad.
   “I was making long casts with the Toad and my Double Trouble Toad hook,” Chris said. “A steady, medium retrieve seemed to get the most bites.”
   In cool weather such as dominated this part of Florida for the past couple of weeks, top-water strikes on baits like the Cane Toad can result in lots of missed fish. Even a top water guru like Chris Lane will miss some bass, and the final round was no exception.
   “I missed an 8 pounder, a 6 pounder and two 5-pound fish,” Chris said, “but I didn’t let it get me down. You have to have mental toughness to be a tournament angler and to fish baits like these. Luckily, the right hook made a big difference, and I was able to land most of my strikes.”
   Another key, according to Chris, is to have patterned enough bass that missing one or two doesn’t cost you the tournament. The winner was also quick to credit his sponsors and the products that helped him to the win. He noted that his Power Poles helped him to stay in the best areas without risking spooking the fish with an electric motor. His Legend boat, Mercury outboard and Atlas jack-plate got him in and out of heavy vegetation without incident, where he found his bass.
   Chris cast the Cane Toad on an All Star rod and Abu Garcia Revo baitcasting reel spooled with 50-pound-test Stren SuperBraid.
   When his brother, Bobby, wasn’t tearing truck doors off the frame, the Elite Series pro was busy catching Okeechobee bass by flipping a black and blue Berkley Crazy Legs Chigger Craw or swimming a 3-inch Berkley Ripple Shad swimbait. He fished them on SpiderWire braid and SpiderWire Ultracast lines, respectively, spooled onto Abu Garcia Revos. Bobby finished with 38-1, three pounds and an ounce behind his brother.
   Terry “Big Show” Scroggins used two patterns for his third-place finish (37-9). He flipped a Yum Big Show Craw in black and blue or cooter brown on 65-pound test High Seas braid and a 7 1/2-foot Duckett Fishing Micro Magic flipping stick. He also caught bass on the outside edge of eelgrass and hydrilla by Carolina rigging a junebug Yum Houdini Worm behind a 3/4-ounce Excalibur sinker rigged on 20-pound High Seas fluorocarbon line and a 7-foot Duckett Fishing Micro Magic rod.
   Randall Tharp, who led the tournament going into the final round, fell to fourth with 32-8 after mechanical problems cost him part of his fishing day. Tharp won the two previous Bassmaster Opens he fished.
   Elite Series pro Russ Lane had the big bass of Day 3 with a 6-0 lunker.On the co-angler side, Blake Stewart brought three fishing weighing 4-9 to the scales in the final round to give him a total of 16-10. It was enough to beat second round leader Aaron Gengler by six ounces. Local favorite angler and fishing guide Mark Shepard moved up several spots with one of the biggest bags on Saturday to just finish outside the top ten in 11th.

Till next time tight lines and good fishing….
From Staff Writer BASSonline – fishing@bassonline.com
BassOnline.com / 888-829-BASS

  Carl and his son Carl Jr traveling from Texas to go fishing on Lake Okeechobee on August 13, 2009. 

I had the pleasure of fishing with this father and son for a half day on the Big O.  I suggested early, so they arrived at 6:00 am ready to fish.  We headed right out before the sun came up, when we got to my favorite fishing spot on the Big O everything was prefect. Carl was surprised by how big that world famous Lake Okeechobee really is, almost all of our customer are impacted like this. 

 We started the morning throwing top water and Carl senior missed some nice blow ups, but that happens to best of us. When the sun finally came up, we started throwing worms and Carl Jr. was on fire!  He started reel’em in, he put a hurting on his dad, with catching one right after another. At the end of the trip, Jr  had won catching more then dad, but the competition will be back on it March!

Thank you Pohl family  for the good time, we looking forward to seeing you in March once again!

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

 Wow what a month of fishing on the big O (Lake Okeechobee) with huge numbers fish of all sizes some on the beds during the full moon phases,  some schooling bass and cruising bass every were. This month started with my friend Allen of Hilton head, SC… he fished 6 days in a row and has fished with me for many years. Allen has been on many adventures with me and tells me often that Lake Okeechobee is the best he has ever seen it in the many years he has been fishing it. We averaged 50 to 100 plus fish a day on top water baits,  crank baits, frogs and plastics of all kinds. We also were flipping and site fishing on days that permitted it. This years spawn was awesome, with all the new grass on the lake, it has kept the water very clear and you can see fish all over and of all kinds.

This month has made fishing fun for everybody of all ages and skill levels. We  have used no live bait, 100% artificial lures on our guide trips. It has made for some good opportunities to teach the basics to many, while it has let others learn new techniques to add to there angling talent. I would like to thank the Alderman family Pete Scilla and friends Ed Romanoz and all the others for having the opportunity be part of there fishing adventures.

Good fishing and God bless,

From Staff Writer Capt Mark Shepard (marks@bassonline.com )
BassOnline.com / 888-829-BASS