Florida bassin’

Reel Used: 2500 Stradic

Rod Used: 6’6″ Shimano V rod  MH

Line Used: 15lb Power Pro

Bait Used: soft sticks and worms

Before we get to the fishing part I would like to talk about the gear we were using. I am sure some of you are looking at the VRod part on the header and scratching your heads. One of the most often asked questions I get at seminars is how much money do I need to spend to get good equipment. My answer is always to buy the best you can afford and it will last you a good long time. Better to buy a couple of quality rods than four really cheap ones. The V-Rods are a case in point. If memory serves me correctly I got these rods back in 2000. I was fishing a ton of tournaments at the time and believe me they are well used to the point of losing some of the finish on them. As I got into the newer Crucials and Compre’s the VRods were left at the house in Florida where they are used all winter while I fish for largemouth. The same for the Stradics, they are older reels that get left here as well. Neither the VRods or the Stradics are anywhere near the highest priced rods and reels that Shimano sold at the time but they were good solid mid range performers. Judging by the use I still put them through, a recreational angler would get darn near a lifetime of use out of them with a little routine maintenance. Sometimes a small increase in price is a big increase in value for the money. Now to the fishing. My buddy Jeff was down for some meetings in Orlando and as it turned out he had a day free before his flight back. We weren’t long putting some plans in place for him to come visit and wet a line. I have a lot of fun fishing the Stick Marsh / Farm 13 area but it just has not been fishing well for me so far this year so we met on the highway near another impoundment that seems to fish better than the Marsh when the water is a bit cooler. It has a lot more grass than the Marsh and I guess the cover has something to do with it. In the past I don’t think I have ever seen more than four or five boats on this particular body of water so you can imagine my surprise when we got in there and found fourteen other trailers already parked at daybreak. Someone has let the secret out of the bag. We got the boat in the water and idled up the canal into the lake. A low mist cut the visibility quite a bit so we kept the speed down. When we reached the area I wanted to fish there were four boats already fishing the general area so there was lots of competition for the fish. One of the boats had a camera man on the back deck so someone was filming a show. Just hoping they don’t name the lake. Five minutes in and we hooked out first fish on a 5 inch soft stick bait in green pumpkin, not a big one but it broke the ice. The fishing was not as crazy as it has been in the past because of the number of boats but we picked our way through the vegetation and caught fish off and on all day. About 75% of the fish came on the stick bait and the rest on a 10 black and blue worm. The key for us was to find areas with a clean hard bottom butting up to the grass or pads in about three feet of water and fishing the edges. I had hoped to get Jeff into one of the really big ones that live here but the best we managed were some into the fours but as he said they were lots bigger than anything he would have caught at home that day. We get some funny looks from time to time because of the spinning rods and reels but they are more than adequate to handle the fish in anything but the thickest mats and they are great on the days where it calls for a smaller bait presentation.