Orlando Bass Fishing Report
This past week on Butler Chain had its ups and downs. Monday and Tuesday saw some good top water action on Lake Butler. During the early morning we saw a good amount of schooling action. Tuesday turned out to be the best day with bass being caught on High Roller ChugRollers in Fire Tiger. Big bass for the day came in at a solid 3.8 pounds, and just slammed the ChugRoller.
Wednesday I had the great pleasure of having Kathy Barker from ProBass Networks out on Butler Chain. Kathy surprised me thou, when we met at McDonalds she had Skip Collins from High Roller Lures there with her. What I thought was going to be a great top water action day on Butler, was anything but that.
The bass did not want to play fairly, as we did see some schooling action going on, but they avoided any and all top water lures thrown at them, Skip did manage 2 bass on his secret lure, while Kathy caught two more bass, with her landing the big bass for the day and the bragging rights. Only 5 bass made it to the boat, as the blue bird skies seemed to have just shut down the artificial bite.
Thursday I had the McClain duo, husband and wife out on Butler. We started out with Margarita working live bait, and Carl with top water baits. There was very limited schooling action once again, but Carl was very determined to nail a nice bass on top water. He started out with an Original High Roller, but then switched to a ChugRoller. A very solid bass, in the 4 pound class came up to slam the bait. Carl said he felt her hit the lure so he set the hook, but she was gone. That, unfortunately was the end of the top water action for the day. Margarita continued to work the live bait, missing her first bass as it chased the shiner to the surface. She got too excited and the hook up was missed. After a few coaching words, Margarita didn’t miss another bass. We actually had to keep an eye on her, as she never said a word, we only knew she had one on when we heard the drag. Her big fish of the day came in at 5.1 pounds.
Mean while Carl was tossing around a Gitem Shad in watermelon red, with a small screw-in bullet weight. Flipping to grass bed edges, Carl managed some good quality bass, with his big bass of the day coming in at 5.2 pounds on the digital scale. These 2 had a great time on the water catching as Carl said “some good quality bass.”
Saturday we ended the week with my son wanting to head out to Butler and do some relaxing fishing using live bait. We hit Lake Butler and right off the bat he had the first bass of the day in less than 5 minutes of us being on the water. We pretty much just slowed trolled the live shiners around the grass beds with deeper water drop offs close by. My son landing 5 good solid bass caught within 2 ½ hours on live bait. A quick switch to a Fat A and he missed what looked to be close to a 4 pounder right by the boat. When he decided he was more than happy with his catch for the day, we headed back in.
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.
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.
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.
