If you don’t have cabin fever by now, you should. And if you do, why not celebrate your own personal spring break with the best bass fishing of the year…in Florida?
By Ray Reilly for Press Pros
Where have I been, you wonder?
Fact finding, of course, like any good outdoors writer worth reading. And like you, by the time the thrill of Ohio State winning the football championship had worn off I had a severe case of ‘what to do next’?
So about the time that pitchers and catchers reported for spring training, I packed up, made a couple of calls to friends in the Sunshine State, and headed south to go fishing – bass fishing – at the best time of the year.
Coverage of the outdoors on Press Pros is proudly sponsored by Olde English Outfitters, in Tipp City.
“February has been warmer than usual, and it has ’em active earlier than normal,” said long-time friend Steve Durbin, who grew up in Mahoning County, now retired outside Lakeland, Florida. “No one’s doing much and you’re going to have some pretty good ponds all to yourself. We’re going to catch fish.”
Lakeland is located in Polk County, right in the middle of Florida, off Interstate 4, and there’s a reason why they call it Lakeland. There’s fishable water everywhere, and what Steve calls some pretty good ponds are as big as five acres. There are, of course, much bigger ones, but five acres of prime private water is something you just can’t turn down. And Steve knows some people…always an advantage if you want to hunt, or fish.
Weather and season is everything if you’re trying to catch bass. In Ohio spring and fall are the best times. Winter is the worst. And even in Florida, when water temperatures dip beneath 50 degrees the fish get sluggish during December, January, and February. But true to his word, this has been an unusually warm February, pushing fish to feed and begin the reproduction cycle a bit earlier than normal. We pulled in to one of his spots on February 5th, and within minutes my cabin fever became a distant memory.
Spinner baits worked particularly well on early spring bass on the prowl. This was a typical specimen.
On a piece of water not three acres big, we fished some spinner baits off a small dock that was one of a series of docks serving four adjacent properties. On the second cast Steve caught a two-pounder, shimmering green and the epitome of a healthy specimen of largemouth bass.
On my fourth cast under the neighbor’s dock, I latched onto a much bigger fish, and the fight was on. A jumper, he came out of the water shaking his head and with the shimmering blue water as a background he looked like a postcard you’d send from ‘Sunny Florida’. It was as good a thirty seconds as you can have with a spinning rod and reel, and when we unhooked him we guessed him at about four pounds, twice the size of Steve’s fish. We fished that way, around the docks and along the bank for about two hours and, truthfully, we didn’t set a world record but we caught plenty of fish. My four-pounder was the biggest, however.
“I know another place we can go this afternoon,” Steve promised. “Bigger water, and we’ve have a boat to use. Let’s see if we can’t get something a little better.”
Twenty miles away, at 3 pm we pulled into a trailer park located on a body of water that was easily thirty acres, framed by lily pads and trees covered in Spanish moss. It looked perfect, and it produced in kind.
Casting a Rebel crankbait we were soon catching fish on about every third cast, but nothing bigger than what we caught in the morning. And then….
I switched back to a shiny spinner bait with pork rind skirt and something slammed it on the second cast…right out of the lilies. This was a good fish…a big fish…a chamber-of-commerce fish…and when it came boiling out of the water Steve reached for the net. There was no landing by hand with this one. It took about a minute, and when I got him to the side of the boat it looked like a ten-pounder – Bill Dance big – and my heart was in my throat because I’d never caught a bass that big. My previous best had been seven pounds out of the St. John’s River, more than a decade ago.
It was a beauty, but it wasn’t ten pounds. With Steve’s rusty tackle box scale it pushed the needle to 7 pounds, 13 ounces, a personal best, and all the justification I needed for driving two days and a twelve hundred miles.
I stayed a week and we had many moments as good as that one, well worth the time and well worth writing about if you want to go, yourself. There’s no shortage of good public fishing if you’re itching to get out of the house and catch something bigger than crappies through the ice on Lake Loramie. You can do it, trust me. It why they call Lake Okeechobee the bass capital of the world. And they ain’t lyin’.
Spring break early? Where will you spend yours?
Til next time, I’ve enjoyed it.
Olde English Outfitters proudly sponsors coverage of the outdoors on Press Pros Magazine.com.