THE END WAS NEAR (WEAR YOUR SEAT BELT!!)

 Last Sunday morning while driving north bound on US 27 I was on the way to do a Tournament out of  Belle Glade on Lake Okeechobee when an eighteen wheeler cut across in front of me. The truck darted out in front of me so quickly that I had no other option than to hit him. It's amazing how the mind becomes so aware of everything in moments like that when you are frantically trying to escape the inevitable. I keep reliving that moment before the collision over and over in my mind like a slow motion movie. After breaking briefly I must have hit him going about sixty miles per hour. I probably flipped once or twice by the look of my truck and the guard rail. By the grace of god I am not dead. I truly believe that If I weren't wearing my seat belt or If I would have hit that truck any differently that I wouldn't be here to write this. After climbing out of the driver side window I started looking for my boat and noticed the trailer next to the truck, but didn't see the boat anywhere until I glanced out towards the canal next to the road. My boat that I was towing flew about sixty yards and landed in the middle of a canal, because of combination of the morning low light and the fact that I wasn't thinking properly it looked like a mirage floating in the distance and it was as if she were beckoning me for one more day of fishing just one more day. Both my truck and boat were completely destroyed.There will not be one more day with that boat or truck.

 The truck driver was walking around and he didn't seem too hurt so hopefully he was okay. I am very sore and feel as if I was the loser in an MMA fight. I don't have any major lacerations and no broken bones. Now it's just about recuperating. Hopefully, I will be back on the water soon.

Capt. Thadeus Ragan
www.gladesbassin.com   

Fun in the Holey Land!

Marty Arostegui and I fished the Holey Land today to try and break his 401 world record. Marty has more than double the world records than any other man. We had our chance at a big gar but he just wouldn't take Marty's fly. About midway through our trip we kind of aborted our mission of record breaking because we realized the big gar and mud fish weren't very active, and decided to help out with stocking the IGFA pond. We relocated 10 small bass one fairly large mud fish and four medium sized gar. Hopefully these fish will put a smile on a few kids faces during the fishing rodeos they have there.

Capt. Thadeus
www.gladesbassin.com

Bassin In the Glades with Jack Sovoie and Don Boyle

What a trip! I have to admit it took some time to find the fish for my friends Jack and Don. With all the high water we were stumped for the first part of our day. After a location change it was game on! The magic started about an hour and a half before dark. We had blow up after blow up! They weren't giants, but it sure was fun! I hope to see Jack and Don again. They were great guys to hang out with. Above is a photo of Jack with one of his bigger Bass. 

Cover of Fly Life Mag.

Some lucky guy is on the cover of Fly Life Magazine this month! http://www.flylifemagazine.com/ Check out the article on fishing in the Everglades.

   Even though the fishing has slowed dramatically over the last couple of months, because of the high water, when you find the right land locked canals there are still plenty of fish waiting to be caught. 

  I'm headed up to Lake Okeechobee today to help Roland s' out with a guide trip. I'll give everyone the details later.

Keep catching them,
Thadeus
www.gladesbassin.com

A LESSON LEARNED AND MONEY EARNED!!
  I had a third place finish for a 1,900.00 pay check, in the BFL Gator Division two day Super Tournament on Lake Okeechobee October 1-2, placing me 22nd in points and giving me the opportunity to fish the regional tournament on Lake Hartwell !

  I practiced for about seven days, sun up until the mosquito's came out in the evening. I searched off shore 90% of the time, checking rock piles, holes, flats. and shallow grass lines. I threw traps, chatter baits, crank baits, swim baits, jigs, and soft plastics. Because the lake is low right now with lot's of clean water out there I assumed the winning bag would be caught off shore. What I found wasn't bad but it just wasn't good enough to win. The numbers were easy to catch. I caught schooling bass on everything I cast into the water but the big ones just wouldn't respond to anything I did. I know they were there, because a couple of times I would see a giant chasing a small bass up to the boat that I had on the line. Also, I found a four and a half pound fish dead with a full size bream stuck in it's throat, and a big bass was trying to engulf another blue gill that was half alive making ripples on the surface. That's why I decided to throw big swim baits but, they ended up getting very little attention. I did catch a couple of three pound fish on them but, it took way too long. On the final day of practice I went out to hone in on the off shore bite and it didn't go well at all. First of all, I was borrowing a friends boat that had different electronics than mine on it, and the couture lines were completely different, so I couldn't find the little sweet spots I had located a couple days before. I borrowed my friends boat because it runs faster than mine and I wanted to save as much time as possible during the tournament. Second of all, a cold front started pushing in causing the wind to blow a little harder making everything more difficult.

 From past experience I knew that even though the big ones were there it doesn't mean they will bite, so I made the a last minute decision to abandon my whole off shore plan and fish the rim canal. I would have more fishing time, and less running time, and also the wind was supposed to pick up even more hurting the off shore bite.

 Trusting my instincts worked. I had five fish totaling a weight of about ten or eleven pounds within two hours on that first day. I caught two pound fish after two pound fish all day on jigs and Venom skip shads. About two hours before having to take off for weigh in I found the sweet spot and the big ones became active! I upgraded to twenty pounds and headed in. I was in third place going into the second day, but the cold front was in full force and the temperature dropped about twenty degrees that night before the second day, shutting the bite down even more. Again it wasn't too difficult to get a limit right away, but the fish were definitely smaller on day two, at least in the morning. I worked my jig exclusively because my biggest fish were caught on it the first day, and I just knew that eventually I would hit another sweet spot like the day before. Well I was wrong!! By 12:00 I only had about eight pound's and weigh-in was at 2:30, so to say the least, I was freaking out! I put my jig rod down and let my attachment to that technique go. Picked up the skip shad rod and started taking my frustration out on burning the skip shad. That's when the madness began!! As soon as that thing would touch the water a fish would turn a flip on it!! I caught more than ten fish within the last hour and a half, and up graded with two nice two and a half pound up grades. I made a bad mistake though, I let the excitement and adrenalin get the best of me. Right at the end, I hooked a beautiful three or three and a half pound fish and tried to rush it in, all the while my co-angler was screaming "TAKE IT EASY, TAKE IT EASY"  and sure enough, I lost the fish just out of net reach. That was it, that was my chance to maybe win the thing but, you know what, at the end of the day I held third and am happy to have placed as high as I did competing against such great anglers.

FISH HARD!
Thadeus Ragan
www.gladesbassin.com  

My new advertisement is out in the current issue of Fly Life Mag!

 I'm still on the fish in the Glades. Did really well on a buzz bait yesterday. I love catching them on that thing!! The way they just follow it and bite it at the last few feet of the retrieve is awesome!!

Email me today to book your everglades bass catching adventure.   thadeusragan@gladesbassin.com   or  thadeusragan@hotmail.com

Bassin with Ryan and Conner Hess!

Conner with his four pound bass!

One of Ryan's first bass of the day!

I had the pleasure of fishing with Ryan and Conner Hess from Pennsylvania last Saturday! We went deep into the glades to one of my secrete spots and found that the fishing has slowed. We focused our efforts on the beginning of the canal first and had fairly good results. I guess we caught four or five one and a half pound fish right from the start. About an hour into the trip, it slowed down, so I decided to take them to the end of the canal where I've always caught a lot of fish. When we got to the end, there were shore fishermen working over my favorite spot. We noticed one guy bow fishing and three more guys and a lady all fishing this one hole. They were an entertaining bunch, but they didn't have a very good effect on the fishing in that area. The only lady there caught the only bass in that section and I think it was her first one ever because she started screaming " I'm not taking it off, I'm not taking it off"!!! We had a good laugh over that! Conner hooked up with a couple of big gars that gave him a nice fight, but the bass were just not hitting. I suggested we run back to the beginning of the canal for one last effort before giving up. Sure enough, the fish were there! Ryan and Conner's casting accuracy and diligence started paying off. Ryan caught a couple of small ones, then Conner caught one. While releasing Conner's fish, I looked over at Ryan and by seeing the expression on his face I realized he had a nice one! It did a couple of beautiful head shaking jumps and somehow the line got wrapped around Ryan's rod tip. He fought that fish very well considering the line wrap. Just as I was about to reach down and grab the fish, the line snapped! NO!! I guess that's all part of the fun. That fish was at least four pounds. Then Conner makes this beautiful cast with the sling worm into a isolated patch of lily pads. He works the worm through the pads beautifully. When the bait reached the outside of the pads, Conner twitched it a couple more times making it dart back an forth. You would have thought this 12 year old had been doing this his whole life. What perfect presentation! After those twitches an underwater torpedo engulfs his sling worm. He sets the hook like a pro! The three and a half or four pound fish put up a great fight! He did a couple of jumps then went deep around the front of the trolling motor and to the other side of the boat. That bass had no chance with Conner behind the rod and before we knew it, he had the big bass in the the boat ready for it's moment of glory in front of the camera! NOW THAT'S HOW YOU END A DAY OF FISHING!!

CHECK OUT MY FISHING VIDEO BY STEVE WATERS

(CLICK ON ME)   SUN SENTINEL FISHING VIDEO

Everglades Holiday Park with Steve Waters Sun Sentinel Writer

  I Couldn't ask for more of a  perfect day as far as the weather and the company goes. What a treat it was to meet Steve. I've been meaning to ask him to fish with me for quite some time. Finally, I asked him and to my surprise he accepted the invite.
   Boy does he have stories to tell! I was entertained the whole time. It's no wonder he's such a good writer. He remembers everything. We were talking a little too much at times, and because of lack of focus I missed the first two quality big fish bites. One of them was a giant. I was flipping a Black Venom grub along the south end of L67, and when I looked over at Steve I lifted the grub out of the water and onto the top of a pad. I noticed something felt funny, so I looked  back at the grub quickly and saw this huge swirl under a pad that the grub was sitting on top of. I had just lifted the bait right out of the fishes mouth. The funny thing was it didn't  bother me that much. It felt good to be out there fun fishing without the stress of a tournament situation.

The water has risen a lot, and the bite has slowed down out there but at the end of the day we had a flurry of bass catching activity. We started burning Venom Salty Sling Worms across the surface, and that did the trick! We caught about 1o bass in a very short amount of time one was about 3.5 pounds and the biggest was around 5 pounds! Steve was even able to catch a couple of the bites on video which was very cool!

Please keep an eye out for his article on our trip. It should be in the next issue or the one after.
SunSentinel.com
 

Holiday Park Win On Sunday August 14

My fishing partner Linda Robinson and I just added another tournament win to our resumes!! We fished Luke Campbell s' Tournament held at Everglades Holiday Park yesterday and won it with 26.65 pounds!! Our biggest fish weighed in at 6.07 lbs which also gave us the big fish win!! Holiday Park is just west of Weston FL where Griffin Rd meets US 27.

It was one of those fantastic days that only happen every once in a while! I felt like we knew exactly where to go and what baits to throw. It almost seemed effortless. Don't get me wrong, the fishing was not easy but, the decisions felt right. We worked the conditions perfectly. There was plenty of small fish around but the big fish bites were hard to come by. We only had seven quality bites all day but, that's all it took.

Holiday Park is such an amazing fishery. It baffles me that so many giant bass are caught there with all the fishing pressure it gets. Just about every weekend and all year long, local bass clubs hold tournaments there but at almost every tournament those big momma's make it to the scale for their infamous moment in the spot light.

Keep fishing,
Thadeus
www.gladesbassin.com

FISHING WITH FRIENDS ON OKEECHOBEE OUT OF CLEWISTON FL

Just being on this beautiful lake makes you all giddy inside. The breathtaking sunrises and sunsets are so full of color. Looking in the distance over the lake's large expanse of water is like looking over the ocean with no land in sight anywhere. It's abundantly full of life as well as history. Cameron and I, as kids in Tennessee, would frequently talk and dream about trying our skills and techniques out on this wonderful big bass yielding lake.

Most of this year the lake has been phenomenal for bass fishing, with giant bags of big fish weighed in at most tournaments. I know of several tournaments, if you didn't have at least a total of five bass weighing 25 pounds or more you might as well forget about a cashing a check. We didn't really find the class of big fish we were looking for during this trip but we did have a great time catching between 50 and 60 bass ranging from 1/2 pound to 4 pounds.




The challenge of trying to figure them out was quite nice. It was neither too difficult nor too easy. We started out burning big plastic baits across the surface on heavy braid which is one of the typical and best ways to fish Okeechobee but, we didn't get a single bite. So, we knew exactly what to do. We need to go finesse and what better baits are there to fish finesse than a Venom skip shad and salty sling worm. That decision changed everything and the bite was on! We had to slow way down and focus. You couldn't just throw a skip shad out there and reel it across the top and expect to get bit. It was all about the long casts and patient slow twitching retrieves. You know the kind of retrieve I'm talking about; the kind of retrieve that's painfully slow. Another thing we found effective was to drop down from 40 pound braid to 14 pound braid and 12 pound fluorocarbon line. The fish were scattered over most of the areas we worked but every once in a while we would find a sweet spot with anywhere from 5 to 20 or more fish caught. Many of our bass were caught in Uncle Joe's cut and just outside the cut. One key in finding the fish on the main lake was the grass. There seemed to be more fish hanging around the very subtle grass lines we found in about 2.5 ft of water. Also if you're into catching bream and shell crackers they are on bed in the shallow flats and if you know Okeechobee bream they're like bream on steroids! Think how much fun it would be to catch a few of those on fly!




Fishing in the rim canal is good now as well. Our three biggest fish came from the rim. All in all, the trip was very successful and Rick captured some amazing images to help remind us of how blessed we are to be able to experience days like this.

The water is very shallow in the main lake therefore if you're unfamiliar with the lake don't try and run around out there while it's this low or you will definitely break something. The rim canal is even sketchy so stay in the middle if you head out there. My suggestion is to go with someone who knows the lake well for your first few trips just to get familiar with it.



If you like the photo's posted here call photographer Rick Sorenson to help you document your next trip at 305-987-5512.

This blog can also be seen on www.fishexplorer.com

Keep Fishing,
Thadeus Ragan
www.gladesbassin.com