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