Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Lake Kissimmee Report 2/28

We held our North Tampa Bass February tournament at Lake Kissimmee out of Thomas Landing this past Saturday with several nice bass being caught but only a few 5-fish limits. After a rough start to my morning I was able to put together a small limit before screwing up at the weigh-in and only weighing in 4 fish!
I started off by going to what I thought was my "secret" spot on Kissimmee but in the darkness of the morning or maybe I just wasn't awake yet, I completely mis-calculated and found myself on Philadelphia Point. It looked great so I decided to start there. The bite was slow for me in the morning as tried topwater frogs, traps, worms, trick worms with no luck. The water temp was about 64 to start with the air temp around 60. As the sun came up and heated the water a bit the action started to pick up. I nailed a nice keeper of a small point of grass but half way to the boat he spit my culprit. That was the only bite I would get on a curly tail worm so I switched to a trick worm to see if they wanted something with a little less action. It took over a half hour but I finally got a bite on the trick worm and it was a nice one! After a couple leaps she looked to be about 3 pounds and a good start but as I got her to the side of the boat she got stuck in some Kissimmee grass and before I could get here free she freed herself of the grass and my hook! I was dissappointed to put it mildly but it gave me some confidense to start pounding the trick worm with reckless abandon! About 20 minutes later and around 10:00am, after three missed fish, I finally land a keeper! She would go almost 3 pounds and I can now get the missed fish out of my mind! I went on to pick up 2 more small keepers on Philladelphia Point before heading to the "spot". Somehow along the way I got side-tracked and decided to hit an area in the Tiger Cove area as it looked very bassy. I was only able to get a one short in about a half hour so I took off. I decided to skip my spot for now and head to some docks in the Kissimmee River/Camp Mack area. Water was very murky and I just wasn't feeling it so I decided to head out to the "spot" and see if I can't get two more keepers to round out my limit. When I arrived I had only about an hour 'till weigh-in so I went to work. It only took about 10 minutes to get my fourth fish of an outside weed edge on a junebug texas-rigged trick worm. With about 15 minutes left, I finally catch my fifth keeper on the same bait and I happily head back to the dock with a small but hard worked limit! This is where it gets heart-breaking (at least for me)! I am tournament director so in the midsts of trying to get set up and get my fish weighed, I missed one of my keepers getting stuck in my weigh-in bag! I just bought a new Gator Grip bag with a mesh insert and he got his gills stuck in in the mesh as I dumped the bag into the tub. I even unwittingly looked into the tub and said "4 fish, 4 alive"! Oh well, I guess I was just destined to not got my limit on this day! Overall I had 5lbs 11ozs officially with 1st place weighing in 10lbs 8 ozs, 2nd-10lbs 7ozs and 9.9, 8.0, and 7.0 respectively after that. Big bass was won by John McCallister with a 6 pound 11 ounce bucketmouth caught on a black with blue flake senko. Oh, and the fish stuck in my bag survived after patiently waiting for the weigh-in to end:)
Water temps: 64-70
Air temps: 58-85
Wind: Calm in the morning, 10-15mph in the afternoon

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