Gonna try this again....

[zman]

I had this post nearly completed last night, only to lose it somehow when I hit the back button...

I don't think it is possible to take such a fishing trip as I did, make numerous strategic decisions, and to do it all without having made a few mistakes. The stated goal of my trip was to catch a 10 pound bass, in that respect I clearly failed. The first 3 days I spent trying numerous different things in a hope of dicovering the one pattern that would deliver me Dean Rojas type numbers, in retorospect I should have probably limited it to 1 day or a day in a half searching for new patterns. On day 4, thursday, I tried something that I knew had the potential to work as it had worked previous years, flipping isolated bullrushes in 4 feet of water with a hard sandy bottom. It didn't take landing a 5 pounder to realize that this was my best bet and that my mistake had been not going to it earlier. The next morning, friday I resumed fishing the isolated clumps of bulrushes only to lose 2 fish that were as big as the 5 I had caught the previous day - and then the winds came. That knocked me off my bullrush pattern, I tried several times to make it out on to the main lakes to find some rushes in a similar situation but it was not to be. In the end I even got within 100 yards of 1 patch, only to realize I was surrounded by heavy whitecaps.

It seems that as soon as I had discovered the pattern that I should be pursuing, I was knocked off it. Thats how it goes I guess with only 6 days to fish and such an ambitious goal. I really don't have any huge regrets, looking back on the events in order I understand why I made each decision. Perphaps I wish I just had the foresight to know that the weather would not stay at 83 and calm, or that spending my time flipping the massive wall of rushes on hatchineha was too slow and unproductive.

As for details and suggestions, I would suggest that fishing hard on such a trip is obvious - you don't get chances like those every day. In the case of Florida too, I would suggest narrowing down the line of options, focusing on isolated patches of cover out in the lake perhaps, instead of the long weedbeds which do stretch for miles. I think I covered too much water.

Two common phrases stick out to me regarding this trip. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. In regards to this I was never skunked, even when the wind blew in the 30 mph range on a saturday and it was wall to wall traffic in the canals I managed several good fish. In that respect maybe my sucess becomes a relative thing, relative to others and to the conditions with which I was faced.

The other saying is more vulgar, you can't make chicken salad out of chickensh!t. This one is true and notable too. I didn't hear of a 10 pound bass being caught by anybody that week, maybe the alignment of the planets wasn't right or something - or maybe taking 6 days and saying you are gonna catch a 10 pounder is unrealistic.