Water: Very Clear near weeds, temp was 62-68 degrees
Air: mid 70's
Doug and I decided to give the Big O a try. We had never been to this legendary bass water, so after keeping an eye on the weather reports for a week, we decided to head down two days before the full moon.
I fought the rain for 3 hours to get to his house early Monday morning. We loaded his truck and boat and then spent another 4 and a half hours battling the rain to arrive for an afternoon of fishing.
After checking in at the Roland Martin Fishing Lodge, we decided to grab a bite to eat before heading out. Doug had a conversation with the FWC ranger and he said that there were tornado watches up for the area. Soon, the skies really opened up and the wind began to howl. So after our lunch, we holed up in our room to await Tuesday morning.
We left the marina basin and passed through the lock bright and early Tuesday. Not knowing where to go, we proceeded out the channel and turned to the south east and began casting in Coot Bay. We quickly saw the water turn very clear as we neared the shoreline vegetation. We also noted that there were quite a few rocks in that area. We got the kinks out or our lines and about an hour later decided to head to the Northeast and fish up by Uncle Joes cut.
We hung out near the channel to try and determine the easiest way to get there by observing how the "locals" left the channel area. Soon we saw the boats cutting through a small boat cut and we were off towards new water.
We saw about five boats fishing just north of the cut, so we proceeded to an area about a mile north of them. It looked good, but so did everything else we saw. This area had more of a "point" that came out in the big water and we could see the eelgrass making a smooth finish to the water, so we decided to give it a try there.
We fished up the eelgrass line and ducked into the reeds at the end of the point. Doug was casting a sluggo knock off, when he started getting some bites. He was quick striking them and didn't hook up on the first few boils. Too much coffee I guess, but soon had hooked up on the first Big O bass.
We continued to fish in this area. Doug had a bunch of blowups, but just couldn't set the spurs to anything else.
I spent time on his poling platform looking for bedding fish. We found lots of beds, but none were occupied with the big mommas, but we saw plenty of the bucks from 1-3 lbs. One area back in this reed patch was absolutely covered with beds, but the fish just weren't locked down on them. They were in really shallow water, shallow enough that we had to pole out.
The wind started to turn to the north and we decided to head back towards the marina not knowing how this lake reacted to wind.
We stopped on a spot on the West Wall and I caught my first bass on a Skinny Dipper. He was a little guy, but at least I had finally stuck one.
About this time, we realized Doug's Garmin wasn't showing the depth any longer,a bad feeling when this lake averages about 3 feet deep and we don't have a clue about how deep it is anywhere and is it safe to run.
We decided to go back to the ramp, pull the boat up on the trailer and see if we can get to the sonar to work. Not finding anything obviously wrong, Doug called Garmin and after walking through the situation with them, they decided that there wasn't anything we could do, except send it back and get another one.
So, after inquiring with the locals, we decided to run the Rim Canal and fish off of it. We were told that we could run it wide open and since the wind was coming hard out of the north, we would be protected.
So, we ran towards the South East. We fished in a lot of the cuts down there. Doug was getting a few bites dropping a worm into mats that had blown up in these cuts, but couldn't hook up.
As the afternoon went on, we pulled into a cut that looked man made. We saw 3 of the biggest gators we had ever seen. They were enjoying the sun drenched bank. We fished around the corner from them when I finally got a bite. Much to my surprise, it was a red tail hawk that swooped in on my Big Dipper thinking it was a great treat. He flew about 20 feet when I snatched it from him. Lucky for him (and me) he wasn't hooked. As the lure flew free it lodged in a bush about 10 feet from where the hawk finally landed. He was about ready to get it again, when I finally freed it from the bush. As the hawk took off over the swamp about a hundred coots took off out of the reeds thinking they were the next dinner for this hungry hawk.
We decided to try one more cut on the way back to the marina.
We pulled in about 5 PM and soon we saw a gull swoop down and grab a minnow right at the mouth of the cut. The water started erupting with some bass schooling. Doug and I started slinging our plastics since we knew this would be the last shot before dark. We managed to yank 7 out of this school and one that was working nearby. It felt good to be on fish like this.
You can see the commorants resting in the trees in the background. They were coming in to roost.
The final score of the day was Doug 5 to Bill's 4.
But we finished on a high note and felt like we knew enough to be confident that Wednesday would yield a better catch.
We got back to the room and a had a couple of cocktails. If you need liquor go to Betty's right up the street from Roland's place. I walked through the open door that had a low light over a pool table. There was the "usual crowd" in there I guess. Some women talking about their cars getting broken into and Betty was cussing about getting a lid off a margarita mix. "All this *#@%ing work for a margarita" I believe was her quote.
She finally got to my request of a pint of fine Smirnoff Vodka. She said $8, I said fine, and looked in my wallet at a bunch of ones and made the comment, "you would think I've been at the race track with all these ones." She replied, "no I think you've been at the titty bar." I said I don't think I would be at a titty bar that was accepting ones. She said, "One man's junk is another man's treasure, honey" with a grin. I went to the truck and Doug said he thought I might be thrown out looking at the place and the amount of time it was taking for me to get back.
I just replied, "lt's your kind of bar."
We got up Wednesday morning and decided to head to the area five miles northeast of the marina. We wanted to get in the reeds and fish the beds we located yesterday.
We were greeted with low clouds, fog and warm temps.
I told Doug "we are gonna kill'em today".
There was one other boat putting in as we were. He was in a Big O boat, made down there for this lake. Cool boat we said. He took off, we eased out and headed towards our well planned starting point.
I had joked with Doug that maybe his depthfinder would work today as he rigged it up. When we plopped the boat in the water, it was working!. We could now run and not worry about hitting the bottom.
As we were getting closer we could see that someone was in the reeds where we were gonna start. Low and behold it was the guys we saw at the ramp. We just scratched our heads wondering how, on a lake that seems as big as Lake Erie, did the one boat out in front of us end up where we wanted to fish?
Well, at least we had confidence we were in the right area.
So we layed down and started to fish the weed line in front of this area.
It's hard to see, but the guys in the boat are back in the reeds to the left of the white stake.
My first cast yielded a nice back lash as I hooked the poling platform of the boat. The next one nothing but my second real cast just to the right of the stick got this one in the boat.
The skinny dipper was working again.
Soon Doug hooked up.
It was on there for a while. We caught a bunch of fish. When we eased over this area, we realized that there were big holes in the grass about the size of the boat. We figured the fish were in there pushing bait around against the side of these walls and were attacking anything that swam through there.
The guys that were camped out in the reeds didn't leave and we saw there rods bent a few times, so we know the bedding bass were there. We saw a bunch of gulls at times above their boat, so we think they were shiner fishing and were chumming off and on with the shiners, consequently the birds looking for a meal.
We saw a spot behind the weed line the day before that we were gonna fish, but a boat beat us to it. So, after our bite died our there on the weed line, we decided to try and cut through the grass and go look at the little pond behind the reeds. We eased throught a little cut and took a right. It was pretty much a jungle of weeds and pads. The water was maybe 18" deep.
Doug's first cast had fish running towards his lure and we went "oh boy!"
Wow, did we find them in there. Every cast, I heard Doug saying "here he comes!" We caught fish after fish out of this hole up to 3 lbs.
The Sluggo he was throwing would slither over the brush and "Kaboom" one would just clobber it. I switched over to a 7" senko and rigged it backwards so it would slide through this trash easier and soon was getting eat like Doug.
I very hard rain shower came through and the wind began to blow.
We poled over to the other side of this little pond and caught a few more. We decided to leave, and we learned we had bottomed out and couldn't move the boat. The wind, which had picked up hard from the south had moved the water out of this side of the lake and had lowered the water depth the few inches that previously floated our boat.
Well, I said "I've been throwing the skinny dipper, now it's time to go skinny dipping." I stripped down and slid into the water. It's amazing what removing 200 lbs. from a boat will do to it's ability to float. I pushed us out to where we could get moving again. Doug caught another one while I was still naked and in the water. Now that ain't fair!
We left this area with Doug leading me 15 bass to 14 bass.
We decided to try the weed line again where we began and quickly started catching them again. I tied him and then hooked my next one and promptly broke the seat of my reel. After a Chinese fire drill of line every where I managed to land the fish and take the lead which I would never relinquish.
We headed further NE to try some different water. About another mile, we just pulled over on another eel grass line that created a point.
Soon we were catching them again. The skinny dipper was really catching them and Doug had worn out his last sluggo. So, I relented and rigged up the skinny dipper rig. He was soon getting bit, but struggling to hook up. I told him to just try and reel into them. That got him going and it was a skinny dipper bonanza.
We fished until 2:30 and the score ended with Bill winning today's round with 30 bass to Doug's 24 bass.
While we didn't catch the toad, we sure enjoyed the quantity.
The fish were beautiful, the weather warm and it will go down as a memorable trip.
We headed back to the ramp, loaded the boat and headed to North.
Nancy had texted me and said we had flying squirrels in the attic, so I was REALLY looking forward to some quality attic time!
