Lake Okeechobee Bass Fishing Reports

Clewiston-----What a week here on Okeechobee with the Stren Series tournament finishing up on Saturday and Glenn Browne from Ocala Florida winning on the pro side with 60-02 pounds that netted him $25,000.00 and a full rigged Ranger boat, while on the co-angler side Chuck Webb from Sarasota Florida caught 35-03 pounds to win $5,000.00 and a fully rigged Ranger boat congratulations to both. The weights from this tournament should prove to all that the Big "O" is in great shape and producing good quality bass on an everyday basis. The lake level is at 12.11 feet above sea level and has been staying at or around this level for over two weeks now. The bass fishing on wild shiners has picked up and on most days you can keep busy catching fish all day long with most of the bass weighing in from two to six pounds and a few over eight being caught. A few places to try catching bass on wild shiners would be the West Wall on the outside grass line, around Cochran's Pass on the outside grass points and also in Pelican Bay concentrating on the outside grass line. The bass were on the beds with the full moon we had last week and I did get to see a good number of big bass while practicing for the Stren tournament, the water in most areas that the bass had beds in is real clear and these bass were very spooky if you run the trolling motor to much or made shorter casts or pitches most of these fish were gone. Bass can be caught on artificial lure almost anywhere the water is clean and by clean I mean if you can see down in the water six inches to clear water that you can read the newspaper on the bottom. Some of the lures that were working for me this past week were a 10" worm in junebug color, Zoom Fluke in watermelon-red color, and a Gambler Cane Toad in junebug color. The key to most of the fish I caught was to make mega long casts and my new Abu Garcia Revo reels aloud me to make these long casts with 50# Spiderwire Ultracast and is light enough that I was able to make hundreds of casts a day and not have any hand or arm fatigue. Another trick is to let the wind push you through the grass and not run the trolling motor any more than you have to so that you do not scare these bass that are in this shallow water. The area from Uncle Joe's Cut up to Cochran's Pass is still a good place to catch bass on artificial lures as well as the area from Horse Island up to Tin House Cove, all of these areas have beds where these bass have been spawning. If you don't catch any fish in the grass or out on the grass line than you will need to move into the open water and start looking for these bass, a Rat-L-Trap is a good search bait. Another thing to keep an eye on is birds diving on bait and we all know if there is bait there is fish near by. The crappie fishing on the south end of the lake continues to improve daily with some of the locals catching limits almost everyday, Uncle Joe's Cut is the place to be and minnows are the bait of choice. The crappies seem to move in and out according to the weather when the water is warm they seem to move out in the lake and when the water cools off they move back into the canal where they are easy to catch. Till next week good luck and please practice catch and release so that our kids will have a great lake to catch fish in the future.

Bass Wishes
Capt. Scott Martin / Capt. Mark King