Florida Bass Cat Owner's Event

This past weekend I directed and competed in our second annual Bas Cat Owners Event presented by Aqua Tech Marine in Palm Bay, FL. That was one fun event. It was hot, air temps around 100* and water temps in the low to mid 90s. We spent two days prefishing, using my partner's old haunts on Kissimmee and Hatchenahaw, but nothing. We trailered up to Toho and hit some of his old spots as well. NOTHING was biting. I kept feeling that we needed to move offshore due to the low water and high temps. When we were making a move, my partner noticed an off shore isolated patch of Hydrilla about the size of my truck bed. We decided to give it a shot. We almost immediately caught three little fish in that area and another deeper off shore area. Those were the only three fish we caught in practice. So on day one, with no other options, we started there. By 8:30 we had a limit for about 11-12#. We started catching bigger fish and culled up to 17#. Our key spots had to do with bass actively feeding off shore in the heat of the day. We were using watermelon red speed worms through the grass. On day two we did about the same thing, but spend more time moving around in our two areas. We couldn't get a big bite and ended with 11# and some change for a two day total of 28#. As it turned out, four of the top five teams were fishing within site of each other. I could see the first place, second place, and 5th place boats all day. Which was somewhat disheartening because when the first place boat slammed their 9.5 pounder on day two, we definitely heard about it as it was happening. I know we were on the right fish, but those subtle differences in presentation mean the world. The moral of this story, a horrible practice can still years a fourth place finish with a lot of really great sticks. When you do horrible in practice it solidifies where you shouldn't go and shouldn't do, which in some cases is just as important as finding the fish. www.facebook.com/floridabasscatownersevent www.aquatechmarineinc.com