On the evening of January 19th I received a text from my good buddy Neal Combs saying "Let's fresh water fish tomorrow." He convinced me that the Big females should be moving onto their beds with the temp warm up. Neal and I fished the FLW College series the first year he started Seminole States bass fishing team. Certain that Mr. DownToFish himself would put me on some big ladies I changed my plans for the following day.
When I awoke the following morning I was greeted with very sunny skies with little to no wind at all. I was excited to say the least to finally do some bed fishing. We launched the boat on the north side of Monroe and headed to one of his spots. Skipping across the water at 51mph in chilly weather isn't too exciting, but floating into an area loaded with beds quickly warmed me up. The water temp was 52 degrees..
Apparently it was still too cold because not one of the beds we trolled by had a single bass on it. I look to my left and see something crush bait. I make a cast and quickly get a nice sized wake chasing my swim bait. The fish crushes my lure and its on! As I'm fighting the fish I realize its not jumping and I wonder what I have hooked. I get it boat side and see I have hooked my first Florida Pickeral. The Northern Pike I am used to catching in Wisconsin would eat this thing for breakfast but apparently the Florida version doesn't get that big.
I take a quick picture and toss her back in the water. Neal makes a cast to the shore line and instantly hooks up with a decent bass. He flips it in the boat, poses, and tosses her back. I started to get the feeling that maybe it would be a good day on the lake after all. I was wrong..
We went to all corners, sides, flats, and even weed lines... Nothing! The wind started to pick up so we drove back into some canals and still not even a nibble. Fed up with the rejection we head back to the boat ramp. On the way back we passed another boat ramp and happen to see a woman standing the front deck of her boat with a remote controlled trolling motor. She was just going in circles and freaking out. At first I was laughing, but then we quickly realized she had let herself and the boat drift away from the boat dock while her husband went to park the truck.
She couldn't figure out how to drive the boat back to the dock. Since Neal and I are such swell fellows we grabbed onto her boat and gave her a nice little tow back to her husband who has now realized that was his wife out in the middle of the river doing circles with his boat.
While we are hauling ass across the lake I realize I want redemption. As we are loading up Neal's boat I tell him that we should head back to my house and grab my flats boat. Neal is strictly opposed to taking his Skeeter bass boat with a Yamaha 175 in salt water so we have a deal.
A quick stop in Osteen and off to the lagoon we go! We arrive to Oak hill at about 3:30pm. I launch the boat at Riverbreeze this time. The wind had pretty much died down from the afternoon and the air temp was around 70 degrees. The whole time I'm thinking this is going to be awwwesome! We launch my boat and head south. I have the perfect spot that I wanted to put Neal on some upper slot reds. After a 20 minute boat ride which seemed like forever compared Neal's boat we arrive at my spot.
I hop up onto my platform and push us off into endless glassy waters that averaged about 12 to 18 inches deep. Neal takes his spot onto the bow and prepares to cast. That is when we see them! Tail after tail after tail. I wanted to get the boat into the perfect spot so Neal would have the best chance to hook up. I pushed us with in 30 feet from a school of about 15 Redfish and put my power pole down. I instruct Neal to cast just to the left and about ten feet past the school. He makes a perfect cast and brings his bait with in the school of tailers. I make a cast to the right of the school and do the same. A very tense 20 seconds goes by and that's when it happens... One of the fish runs into the line and freaks out the whole school. They all scatter and bummed out we push on. The tails reappear and we make out move to get with in distance. That's when I see it. An over slot redfish was literally with in 5 feet of the boat. I pitch my bait on his nose and he wasn't even the slightest bit interested in eating my gulp..
Not one fish ate our baits that evening. We saw probably at least 100 fish with in a 45 minute period and none of them we even the slightest bit interested in playing tug of war. As the sun starts to crawl behind the trees I decide its time to head back to the boat ramp. Ten minutes later the sun was already behind the trees it was getting dark really fast. Realizing that I didn't grab any lights I make a last minute decision to take a short cut to get back to slippery creek. In the summer this decision would have been easy but low water in the winter had me worried. The ghost handled great though. I'm pretty sure we even coasted over water that was barely there.
Bummed out about our full day of fishing and barely any catching we loaded the boat and headed towards home. I was happy I had found the fish and understand its not always about the catching but more about the fun times and time spent with friends.
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