Kissimmee Chain of Lakes and West Lake Toho – With most of the hydrilla topped out this time of year, your best bet is to fish the edges of the hydrilla patches. Plastic baits are a good choice. Try Zoom Senkos, flukes, and the Vibe are the most popular. Get the bait into the holes in the hydrilla. The Summer showers are cooling things off and producing flow out of shingle creek. Best bet for a quality largemouth bass is early morning, right at daylight – topwater bite explosions never get old. Goblins Cove has been producing very good fish and stringers full when the bite is on. Most fish are hanging deep in the hydrilla patches. Another good area to fish is around the Mack- inson and Paradise Island in the open water and look for school- ing shad. Rattle Traps of any col- or will work, but the chrome with blue or black back usually gets a bite first. Another good area to fish this month are the shallow water shell beds. A lot of large bass will hang around the shell beds ambushing smaller bait fish any time there is flow coming south out of the flood control gates. I always check the mouths coming into the lakes for bass, they’re usually hanging behind cover waiting to ambush bait fish in the flow.
The shellcracker and bluegill are pretty much done spawning and have moved to open water shell beds. Live red worms or crickets are your best bet to catch them over the shell beds. The crappie bite has been ok. I have been fishing the run off pipes that dump into the canals after the evening storms, using live minnows under a float. East Lake Toho has not been bad for crappie. Fish in the mornings in open water deep holes trolling jigs tipped with a minnow. Crappie are usu
