Orlando Bass Fishing Report
The last 2 weeks saw us on Butler Chain for 12 days with a mix of trips, a few trips with live bait and a few with all artificial trips. Start of the week saw for some very tough bite as the water temps had an almost 8 degree drop, which really had the bass on a serious case of lock jaw. Gitem Shads with a small bullet weight worked in and along grass beds worked very slow, and I stress VERY slow in order to get the bites.
Mid week saw the bite pick up as the water temps started reaching the upper 60’s and bass started heading to the beds, with several bass in the 5 and 6 pound class being caught in and around the beds. Once again it was Gitem Shads and 10 inch black neon worms getting the bass to bite with an occasional bass being caught on all white spinner baits.
The shiner bite is still going strong on several lakes on the chain, with a few lakes actually having a drop off with the live bait bite. Two very memorable trips involved two youngsters, first was Edward fishing with his father, we had spotted a buck on a bed, and decided to give Edward a crack at catching this bass, with 4 flips of the shiner to the bass, she would not touch it, so the 5th try, the buck had knocked the shiner off the bed, and at that moment, the female came flying out of the grasses and nailed the shiner and the fight was on. Edward had worked this bass perfect and landed a beautiful 5.4 pound bass.
The second was with 7 year old Nick and his dad Greg. Greg had a bass boil up on his bait twice, but she would not commit to it, when Nick got his bait up there, and in a split second, this bass hit his shiner like a freight train. Nick set the hook and the bass headed straight into the grasses and with a little effort, Nick got her out of the grass, and off to the docks she went, after a brief battle, Nick had a beautiful bass, 22 inches long with a 15 inch girth, weighing in at 6.05 pounds, perfect enough to get his Youth Angler Certification from the State of Florida.
With the weather holding steady, and a consistent air temp, the waters have been warming up slowly, which will mean one thing, bass will be really hitting the beds and the bigger gals will start being caught. Several lakes on the Butler Chain are loaded with beds, most have been empty the last few weeks, so they should be showing up any day now. One consistent pattern has been, even though the bass were not on the beds, they have been holding up very close to them with the bucks right there.
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This report is for Wednesday the 24th, today I once again had the great pleasure of having Rod and his son Shawn back out on the Butler Chain, and once again the Chain did not let us down. This time we worked Lakes Chase and Lake Blanche and once again the bass did not let us down. Altho with a different weather pattern at hand, colder in the morning and much less sun than the previous day, we still got our catch, and almost got another 10 pounder.
This past week I had several trips out on Butler Chain, with the weather playing games with us, we watched bass going from beds to heading back to deep water drop offs. Several bass this week had been caught off beds in various lakes on the chain, using mostly Junebug lizards to get them. Lake Down and Little Lake Down early on in the week seemed to be the hot ticket to catching bass, in and along the grass beds as well as off of bed. Most of the beds spotted were in 2 foot to up to 8 foot of water.
Private waters have mainly been for crappie fishing the past month, and it has been producing some very nice slabs. Bait we have been using have been the SteelShad and jigs tipped with crappie nibbles.
Johns Lake we have spotted bass beds all over the place! Its that time of year for the big gals to show their faces and make clients very happy, as was the case with a father and son trip of Bruce and young Dave. Bruce had been tossing Gitem Warlocks and getting bass here and there, very scattered around the lake and towards the end of the trip, young Dave working a wild shiner got the wake up call of a lifetime! A beautiful and very solid 10.14 pound largemouth bass, let me tell you, this youngster handled this hawg of a bass like a pro! Our main areas of concentration on Johns Lake has been scattered and isolated grass patches, docks and a few areas of open water holding some good hydrilla.
Things have been very crazy to say the least. We have had several trips to Johns Lake, Butler Chain, Conway Chain and a private lake. 
Butler Chain has also been pretty steady for us. Drop offs have been a major focus for us, tossing trick worms, craws and brush hogs into 16 plus foot of water, and slowly crawling the baits up into the shallower waters has been the ticket, most bass we have seen and caught have been suspended in 12 foot of water on the drop offs. Lake Butler and Little Lake Down have been the best producers for us, with Lake Tibet and Lake Louise also producing some good numbers.
The private lake we have been fishing on occasion has been producing very well. This body of water has seen some limited shallow water action, sitting in the middle of the lakes has been really producing some good numbers of not only bass but some 2 pound crappie. Steel shads have been the main bait for catching bass out there, and if worked like slow rolling a spinner bait, the crappie will slam this bait. Best crappie fishing action has been from 6:30am up to about 8am, then they just seem to shut down only getting a few here and there, very scattered, but you can usually get the limit by 8am. Best fishing waters have been in 12 to 18 foot of water, with bass mostly suspended in 8 to 10 foot of water, go deeper and you can catch some very big catch fish here also.
The first half of October has already seen some very good bass fishing action with some good catches. Most of our time has been spent on Butler Chain this month along with some scouting of other local lakes. For the most part bass have been tighter to cover on Butler Chain. We have caught a lot of bass working grass beds and docks with some bass coming from submerged structure in deeper waters.
There has been scattered schooling action out on several lakes on Butler Chain, with Lake Tibet and Lake Sheen being the top producers for us, with Steel Shads and 1 ounce spinner baits catching quality and numbers from these schools.
The month of September has seen some good bass fishing action, as well as some tough action. For the most part, the action has been pretty steady. Shiner bite has actually been very slow, but the artificial bite has been good. Johns Lake has been a good early morning bite using spinner baits and trick worms. Deer Island cut has produced some descent numbers, but the size has not been to my liking.
We did make a venture out to Lake Rosalie, one to check water levels after the tropical storm, and to alo see how the bite was doing out there. We started the day out with Rich tossing some shiners around, and not surprised, there was no action on the in the first hour, so we switched Rich to some trick worms. 
