Pacemaker Fishing Forum

I have been looking forward to this trip for a long time!

Originally, this was going to be a Peacock trip but the unusually cold weather took care of that. Lots of these beautiful fish were killed by cold temps and many of them are simply burrowed in deep water. Note: I did see one at the lake behind my brother's house but he wanted no part of my fly.

So on with the report. I met Joe Shallcross for breakfast at 0630 and by 0700, we met up with Capt. Mark Hall (http://www.flyfishpeacocks.com/mark.htm) so fish for bass in the canals of the Sawgrass Park area. We were fishing by 7:30 AM!

This is a cool fishery, not very wide. What was interesting was watching bass boats zip right past us like we weren't there. I wish I had a few rocks 'cause a couple of these bubbas would have taken one to the back of the head. There is NO room for that kind of seamanship but I guess it happens all the time.



We fished out of Mark's 15" Dolphin flats boat with a 40 hp motor. That's all that is needed. On to the fishing!

Early on, I took the skunk off the boat with a fly caught pumpkinseed and then Joe took the bass skunk off when he landed this guy.



I then landed my 1st bass of the day on the fly rod!





OH...that one wasn't so big but I did manage to catch 3 bream and about 10 bass on teh fly rod. For me....that's a successful day!

Joe was a bass catching machine! He caught at least 25 bass using mostly senkos rigged up different ways. He also used a couple of soft plastics that I have never seen before as well as some home made flattened out jigs that fall backwards when dropped in the water. Joe lives on Sunset Lake and has bass fishing down to a science. He has caught several 8 lb bass in his lake.

At around 9:30, a squall came in and dumped a ton of rain on us. We were about to call it a day but Capt. mark, who has Doplar on his iPhone, said that we should get a break for a few hours. We did get that break and we only got a few more light showers until around 2 PM. That's when we saw lightning and decided to call it a day!



I would guesstimate that we caught around 50 or so bass with this one being the biggest.....



Most of them were in the 1-2 pound range but I will tell you that they fight harder than our bass...NO question about it! I caught fish on top water, both with a fly and conventional. As well, I used Joe's baitcaster and caught fish on senkos, frogs and other unknown (to me) stuff including some hard plastic baits. We did not use any spinner baits or crankbaits.

February fishing has been tough for me the last two years down there in FL. Last year, I caught 1 fish, a nice 5 pounder. This year, I caught many more fish, the biggest at 3 pounds. BUT......it was nice and warm.....70+ degrees. I never got cold when I got wet from the rain.

Joe and I are already scheming a couple of outings down there for later in the year......

And finally, can you pick out the big lizard?