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