Summers come–and summers go.âŻâŻOn the fishing scene, things are rarely terribly different, one to the next. This summer, on the other hand, brought a huge, wet surprise to the North Florida fisher.
At the start of hot weather, you really had to work, in order to launch a boat onto some of our favorite lakes.âŻâŻOn a late-May trip to Newnanâs Lake, I swore off trying to put my boat into the lake just east of Gainesville, where water at both boat ramps was just inches deep.âŻâŻAnd I couldnât help but wonder when I might be able to access the closest water to my home again. Neither I nor any of my freshwater fishing buddies, it turns out, had to wait long.âŻâŻOn the heels of the driest spring season here in decades, came the wettest summer on record.âŻâŻRags-to-riches anglers
started catching bass, speckled perch, and bream on the quickly-rising waters right away.
Surprisingly, at this writing in mid-August, the speck bite has held up best, and Orange and Newnanâs are the top-producing lakes.
Gainesville crappie specialist Brian Roe came into the store a couple of days ago for fresh line on his ultralight spinning reels.âŻâŻHe had launched at Newnanâs that morning and eased out to a favorite open-lake area, now four feet deeper than two months earlier.âŻâŻRoe rigged several outfits with crappie jigs in various colors, set them
at varying depths, and started slow-trolling.âŻâŻIn short order, he had narrowed down two speck-catching key–how deep the fish were hanging, and which colors they preferred that morning.âŻâŻ By 9:30, Roe had pulled in 45 specks.âŻâŻTen were sizable slabs of a pound-and-a-half or so.âŻâŻHe said that, on this day, the fish had gone for green, blue, and pink jigs best.
Bluegill fans, too, are taking advantage of the new
Opportunity–cane-poling with crickets, worms, and grass shrimp to pull big bream from around the flooded Newnanâs cypresses.âŻâŻLily pad beds on Lochloosa have also yielded big numbers of big bream. The Dog Days freshwater fishing in North Central Florida has been way above average, thanks to the rainiest summer in a hundred years.
Gary Simpson
Garyâs Tackle Box
Gainesville, Fl.
garystacklebox.com /âŻgarystacklebox@gmail.com