Orlando Bass Fishing Report
The month of March has seen some great trips out on Johns Lake. For the most part, schooling activity has been great up until the 13th when they just seemed to disappear. We are still having great success using Steel Shads in gold or silver color to catch not only schooling bass, but also bass in deeper waters in the middle of the main lake. One ounce Sugoi spinner baits have worked great around scattered grass patches and around areas with hydrilla and lily pads. When the bass have been schooling, these heavier spinner baits have been great at getting below the smaller schoolers where the quality bass lay.
Once the schooling action ends, junebug trick worms with red, green, or blue fleck with a small bullet weight worked around isolated grass patches have been key to catching the bass. Work the patches very good, to the point if you see one blade of grass, throw to it, as they have been holding bass. For the most part, the bite has been good, but the strikes have not been aggressive ones, you really have to watch your line, as several bass we had to let them swim with the trick worms a few seconds before being able to get a solid hooked.
We have not had too much success with bass around docks, but several of the areas with brush have produced as of late, fire tiger Fat A’s worked around these trees have caught several good solid bass, and made for a fun fight trying to keep them out of the wood after hook up. Deer Island cut has been a good area to work a split shot rig with a trick worm. Main focus has been in waters 4 to 8 feet of water and key in on bird activity, circling or diving birds will guide you to some good fishing action.
February has seen a lot of trips out on Johns Lake. Stan and Carol came for some artificial action and caught some good bass working Steel Shads and Gitem Warlocks. Bite was slow and bass were very scattered on this day. The following day saw us back out on Johns Lake with Grant from Canada, working some live bait and artificial baits, Granted boated 5 bass on live bait, and 27 more bass were caught working Steel Shads, these bass were just hammering the Steel Shads with TWO bass slamming the bait at the same time. Schooling action remained steady pretty much the entire day to keep the action going.
There have been a few days, doing combo trips, where the artificial bite has out produced the live bait, as Eric and Eddie saw, with 3 bass being caught in live bait, and another 11 bass coming on trick worms weighted and worked in and around scattered and isolated grass. Doug and the crew, fresh off the Daytona 500 had some good action catching some quality bass, with one of them coming from one of the coves, this bass not only took a shot a missed one shiner, but made a bulrush for a second one as we watched her dart along a grass bed after the bait, after landing her, she weighed in at a solid 4.9 pounds and was released to fight another day. Steel shad have also been producing some very good catches in open waters.
January bass fishing has been off the hook! The month started out with a big bang, as Ari came to fish, saying he never caught anything over I believe 5 pounds, well Butler Chain did not let him down. Ari caught two beauties, one coming in just over 7 pounds, and the other coming in just over 6 pounds! Both bass were caught on Butler using live bait, although the bite that day was rather slow, the size more than made up for everything this day.
Early part of the month I showed a tournament angler around the chain, giving up a few of my good spots, word back from him was as a co-angler, he ended up in second place, while his boater walked away with first place, all the bass coming from the areas I had taken him to, shameless little plug for myself there, but always a pleasure to hear back from guys on how they did in their tournaments, very happy things went great for these guys.
Johns Lake is still producing some good quality bass. Most of our catch has been coming from around docks and deeper water grass beds.Warlocks and Gitem Sugars have been the main producers for us, along with of course the trusty steel shad.We had a few runs out to Conway Chain of lakes and did very good using the Storm curl tail swim bait, steel shad and Carolina rigged gitem warlocks, all bass were coming from deeper waters, with most of our focus coming from fishing in the middle of the lake.
The month of March has carried over pretty much from the same action we have seen in February, although the majority of the bass had already spawned, we still were catching some bass off beds, or cruising around the beds. Butler Chain we have been catching most bass just off the grass beds and under docks, wacky rigged Gitem KO’s have been doing great under docks as well as the curly 7’s.
water as well.
The month of February has seen some very good bass fishing action here in Orlando. We have had most of our focus on Butler Chain and one of the private lakes that I fish. Butler Chain we have had some good bass come off beds, despite high winds that had consistently pounded us along with what seemed like an endless run on cold fronts.
Most of our trips this month were with artificial baits, with steel shad and a wide range of Gitem Baits catching most of the bass. Steel Shad have been doing a great job in deeper waters when fronts have hit us, working them mostly in 10 to 16 feet of water, almost slow rolling them, with the very tight wobble and close resemblance of bait fish, these baits have been awesome.
Gitem Baits have been plugging the bass for us in and around scattered grass beds, offshore hydrilla beds and docks. The Twin Liz and the Curly 7 have been doing great tossing them under docks texas rigged with a 1/16th ounce screw in weight. The Gitem Curly 10 has been great pulling it thru heavy eel grass to catch some nice quality bass, one day numbers will be up, and size down, but only to be followed up with some very solid bass being caught the next day.
towards the end of the month. Shiner fishing has been doing good, slow trolling the shiners with no float around deep drop offs on Lake Butler itself has produced some quality bass. Lakes Chase and Blanche have also held some good action, Chase has been good in areas where the lay downs are as well as Blanche. Blanche has been very good around the docks as well as just offshore from the docks, finding the offshore hydrilla has produced some very good quality bass.
The month of March has carried over pretty much from the same action we have seen in February, although the majority of the bass had already spawned, we still were catching some bass off beds, or cruising around the beds. Butler Chain we have been catching most bass just off the grass beds and under docks, wacky rigged Gitem KO’s have been doing great under docks as well as the curly 7’s.
