Butler Chain/Starke Lake

[Florida Bassin]

October 26th and 29th I spent the day out on Starke Lake with my tournament partner for what was some great bass fishing action. The 26th we got an early start, hitting the waters at 6:30am, still dark and tried some top water action, and we got none. With the sunrise, came rain and higher winds, so what should have been a bad day on the water saw us catching 16 bass on wacky rigged Gitem K.O’s and white spinner baits. All but 3 of the bass came from the main lake working tight to shoreline and scattered off shore grass beds. The 29th we headed out early once again, with live shiners and crank baits. To our surprise we boated no bass on the live bait, but the crank baits, a Big O in fire tiger pattern, and an Ugly Duckling in shiner pattern boated the bass, to the tune of another 10 bass. Crank bait bass came on the main lake and in Deep Lake. We keyed in on docks and submerged grass beds and found the bites to be very aggressive. We had seen some very good schooling action the first day, but avoided throwing to them and opted to keep searching the deeper water patterns. Storm WildEye Curl Tail swim baits once again picked up some good solid bass in the middle of Starke Lake itself as well as at the mouth of the canal on the Deep Lake side. With the water temperatures starting a nice cool down, I have noticed bait fish pods growing in size which will have the bass schooling up and feeding good to get ready for the spawn.
The past 2 weeks Butler Chain has also been fishing pretty good the past week. Bait fish have been a little bit more active and started to bunch up better, making it easier on the bass to feed up. Concentrations of bait fish have been showing up on the graph close to grass beds and in 10 to 12 foot of water we have seen some very good bait fish pods. Medium to deep diving crank baits have picked up some good bass in both Lake Down and Little Lake Down. Fire Tiger pattern and Crawfish patterns have been a big key to catching the bass out there. Early morning topwater has produced some good action using buzzbaits and High Roller Chug Rollers as well as High Roller RipRollers. Live bait action is still doing good, with most of the action coming from slow trolled freelined medium wild shiners. Deeper water patterns early in the morning and slowly moving to grass lines as the water temperatures warm during the day. Best bet being using a 3/0 or 4/0 circle hook, not only will this improve your hook up rate, but also is great since 9 out of 10 hook ups are in the corner of the mouth, like they should be. Remember, catch and release, so our kids can enjoy the same catching action that we do with their kids.
Capt Tim Fey
Bassfishingfl.com