With the recent water drawn down on Lake O, navigation has become very treacherous due to “coral rock” bottoms in the lake. Stick with main lake boat channels, come off plane way out from the grass edge, and no short cuts!
Bream are being caught in the shallows. Focus on areas that have a harder bottom with some good vegetation cover. The Kissimmee river, Harney pond canal, Clewiston area canal and up around Torrey Island are all great places to catch bream and are much safer for boating until the water level comes up. The best bait for bream and shell cracker fishing is crickets or red worms rigged on ultra-light spinning gear tipped with a small bobber (use a bobber stop on the line above your bobber and below for correct water-depth) and split shot weight. The bream will be in on one big bed so keep your eyes open for a fanned-out area with small isolated beds throughout.
Bass spawning is pretty much done – now it’s time for open water post- spawn fishing which means throwing lures like crank baits and senkos. The deeper water is a great place to practice your crank bait and finesse-worm skills. May and June you can expect to see bass schooling activity, doesn’t matter what you have in your hand, just throw, it’s fun and provides a lot of action for younger anglers.
Bass lures that have been producing: plastic swim baits and frogs, flipping/pitching creature-style lures into smaller-isolated reed clumps, senkos fished slowly in/around vegetation, rattle traps and some spinner baits worked on the out- side edges. Colors for plastics and hard-baits for bass are: junebug; redbug; black-blue; off-white; crawdad and melon shad.
To book your next fun-filled and productive day fishing Lake Okeechobee contact me at 863- 228-7263 or www.southfloridabassfishing.com I’m very humbled and honored to be included in this book and especially on the cover “Fifty Women Who Fish”. Log onto www.whywomenfish.com to purchase your limited copy.
