Highlands Today
Email
Print
Look For The Daytime Bite To Intensify
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: August 27, 2008
At 7:58 p.m. today, we're exactly three days away from the second new moon of August. This Saturday provides the excellent fishing conditions, with the midday heat to contend with the only serious challenge.
The peak feeding migration occurs from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. today, and by Saturday, it'll be from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
If you're into night fishing, from 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. there's a very good chance of having a record catch. Topwater-type baits slowly retrieved out of lily pads and pencil reeds will produce excellent results.
Fishing Facts
The new moon event causes the regular nighttime feeding to diminish due to a total lack of moonlight. This means fish must work harder and longer for sparse meals which results in having to feed during the daylight to consume enough food to satisfy their summertime appetites.
When you also add the fact that dissolved oxygen is at its lowest level of the day from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m., you come to realize that the daytime bite will intensify to the highest level of the lunar cycle.
Fishing Formula
The strategy for this lunar cycle must also take into account the return of our lake's water clarity levels; recovering back to their normal state after the tropical storm.
Experimentation with slight color variations and retrieve depths in order to locate the correct combination of both factors to produce strikes should take less time than it did over the last week.
The "reaction-strike" type bite should be on the increase little by little each week as we near the end of summer. When daytime temperatures drop to the high 80s as a high for the day, enough dissolved oxygen will remain within the water column to enable fish to move at greater speeds more often. Digestion will also increase dramatically, which means more feeding duration and intensity.
Try using more flash and noise when you first start out and gradually reduce both influences and characteristics of technique until strikes start. There's a very good chance that you still might have to slow-crawl a plastic and even "dead-stick" in order to get bites.
The successful angler is always ready to use three to five techniques in order to promote the strikes of small fish, and then he or she arrives at the correct combination of action and color, speed and depth, to get that big fish bite.
Fishing Flash
Lake Okeechobee is fast approaching 14 feet above sea level.
By the time you read this, it should be at that level or above. This is great news for thousands of anglers and all types of lake users who've been long waiting for the lake to become usable again. One more tropical storm this year should restore the lake back to the normal state everyone started to think was a long lost memory.
Lake Istokpoga should be back to the high level for hurricane season sometime near the end of this week. The three gates have been open to almost six feet, which means 4,300 cubic feet per second flows out of the lake. At this flow level it just stays ahead of Josephine and Arbuckle creek influent levels, which are gradually slowing enabling a slow return to a safe lake level.
Fishing Feature
Every once in a while, I take a bass angler out on a lake on which I've been having great success, so that I can share the locations and methods, and bait selections, and enjoy experiencing his success. However, this time was one of those times where the only person who had success was the other angler.
I planned the order in which we would fish five different hot spots, explained the methods to use, and strategy to employ, and watched him land fish in each hole while I worked the same way (my formula) with absolutely no results.
Was it that he was just that much better? I think not.
Was it that he was in the front of the boat all day hitting every "prime area" like a sewing machine? I think that might have something to do with it, since all the fish were on the outside and neither one of us could find a fish back inside the vegetative areas. I just know those fish would have hit my bait if I had first shot at them.
And so it is that "success" comes in many forms for the bass angler, in this case it came by proxy; my fish trained by me during the previous two weeks so that my co-angler could catch them. Ah, how sweet it is.
I will go back there in a few days and teach those fish to show a little respect next time.
Fishing Fiction
"Fish get cold and won't bite because they are cold."
This is total hogwash, nothing could be further from the truth. Fact is, fish are cold-blooded creatures and don't recognize temperature changes. Temperature changes do affect how much fish eat and how often, but the fact is they do eat more than once daily. Here in Florida, it never gets cold enough to stop bass from eating regularly. In Canada, it will get cold enough for bass to hibernate, but they are not cold in the process.
Fishing Tournament
The Wednesday Morning Black Bass Fishing Tournament is open to the public. Next event is today on Lake Jackson. Time: 7:30 a.m. to noon. Pay at ramp - entry fee $30.00 per boat. One person may fish alone if you do not have a partner. For information, contact Paul Tardiff at (863)385-8007 Home, Cell (863) 446-1310 bassbutchie60@aol.com or Dwight Ameling at (863)471-3305.
Dave Douglass is a bass-fishing guide and bass tournament angler and CEO of S.O.S.-Florida Lakes, Inc. He can be reached at 863-381-8474, or e-mail him at davedouglass@sos-floridalakes.org.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertisement
TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online Member Agreement | Privacy Statement | Work With Us
