When you’ve been fishing a productive bass spot for a long time and suddenly those fish disappear, it’s always tough to take. For me, it happened this past weekend on the Kissimmee chain of lakes. To make it worse, my honeyhole went dry on the first day of the MLF Toyota Series Big 5 tournament.
I put a lot of time in getting ready for these bigger bass tournaments. I take pride in the effort I put into locating bass, and I was even more diligent because I wanted to make a good showing on that bigger stage. But there’s no guarantee fish are going to stay where you find them. I was counting heavily on one very large area of open-water hydrilla, but the bass quit biting there and left me in a pretty bad place.
This particular spot was on Lake Tohopekaliga, north of Lake Kissimmee. Missy and I had fished two club tournaments on Toho and managed to catch some quality bass from this spot on both occasions. Naturally, I was pretty pumped up to be on some fish coming into the last two days of practice.
On the last day of practice, my non-boater and I went to check this area one last time. On the very first cast into this spot, he hooked up with a bass pushing 7 pounds. I never even made a cast. We put the rods away and were off to another spot. At my second spot, we caught two more bass that were better than 3 pounds each. So I thought I had a wad of bass that I could go to and finally do some damage in one of these major tournaments.
Before we go any further, let ‘s talk methods. I was throwing a Gambler Fat Ace in black and blue with a blue tip. It is basically a 6-inch senko. But for some reason, I catch way more bass on Gambler’s Ace line than I do on any other senko style worm, so they are my bait of choice in this situation. I rigged this bait with a 3/16-ounce bullet weight on a 6/0 Gamakatsu wide-gap hook. (A very strong hook, since I’m using braided line.)
Let’s also discuss the weather, because I think this is what sunk me. The week leading into the tournament saw some of the warmest temperatures we’d had in a while. Daytime highs were up over 70 degrees and nights only got down to low 50s, so the water temp was coming up.
Then, two days before the tournament, we saw the lows in the morning near freezing and the highs never climbing past the low 60s. This change dropped the water temperature about 8 degrees. That’s a big swing in water temp for these Florida bass.
After catching more than 13 pounds of bass in practice the day before the tournament started, I never got a bite in that area on day one of the actual event. That alone pretty much took me out of the running for a check. After doing so well in practice, locating multiple spots on both Kissimmee and Toho, I managed to catch only three bass on the second day of the event. But every failure or setback will teach you something, if you can successfully analyze what went wrong.
The bass weren’t where I expected them to be, and I think they were simply looking for something to get up against after that water temperature dropped. I may have been able to get them in heavier hydrilla. When the weather took a big turn, and I should have pushed from the sparse hydrilla back into heavier cover. I should have tied on a heavier weight and a smaller bait, then fished slowly through those thick weeds. I should have also pushed to shallower areas as the day went on and taken advantage of the sun heating up that clear shallow water.
There is an old saying in fishing: Never leave fish to find fish. But in my case, I should have left. Having both quality and quantity the day before the event, I got too attached to my game plan. However, the fact that the water temp moved as much as it did should have clued me in that the plan probably needed to change.
Never turn off your ability to make decisions on what the day has handed you. A good lesson learned. Making those decisions can be the difference in catching bass or just fishing for them.
Greg Bartz is a tournament bass fisherman based in Lakeland. Greg fishes lakes throughout Florida’s Heartland and enjoys RV travel around the Southeast with his wife and tournament partner, Missy. Contact him at Greg.Bartz@SummitHoldings.com.
February 18, 2021 at 06:00AM
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