Winter Haven Chain

[Larry Francis]

Friday this week May 12, The Winter Haven chain has been fired up for a while and fishing has been good Docks have been productive and the spring fed clear lakes have had a strong bite. Friday was a special day for me personally so I will fill you in.

Launching on Summit lake like normal I found the bite slow with only a couple fish in the 14 inch class on worms around grass and vegetation. Trying several things from cranks to Flukes, Jigs, worms texas rigged and drop shotted. Just a tough bite. A top water bite has been strong there for a while on schooling fish over deep water from 12 to 25 ft. The Dogma has been the bait of choice for that but was not working today. My thinking with a tough bite was to down size so I went with an old Indiana Favorite the Splash It. Fishing along I moved up to the break line with grass and 12 ft of water. Then there was a disturbance at my bait, not a splash but a gentile slurp. I set the hook and uh oh. This is a pig. This was what I believe to be a 10 pound plus bass. Her gut was a soccer ball and her mouth was 2 fists worth. She went airborn twice and was give my 12 pound big game the test. Pulling drag I fought her for about a minute and when she got to the side of the boat she looked done on her side as I was trying to get the net on her she made another lung under the boat and really puling hard and fast and then gone. Oh I am sick. After a minute to get my thoughts in order I looked and the hook was broken on the rear treble and that was why she was gone. I don't have replacements in the boat so I just kept using bait as it was. I threw back to the same spot and Crash another big fish this one I landed and weighed to 6.26 ( see pics below). After all that I back fishing again and a few casts later, crash this was a 5.1 fish landed. 5 minutes later another 4.8, Then another at 5 lb even. That is 4 pigs in 30 minutes. I caught a couple 2 lb fish but it seemed the bigs were done. I had broken a couple more barbs off the bait on those big fish in the process of unhooking and catching them so the bait was getting pretty sickly. I had an appointment in a little while and was running out of time. I trolled and fished back to the ramp which was only 200 yards away and right before I got there Crash! 5.14 and it broke the last hook off the rear treble.

This was an epic day and the biggest one man 5 fish bag I have ever caught. I had a 27 pd 7 fish limit at St Clair in 2002 with Smallies but that was a 2 man deal as well. This was a day of days for me and on I will never forget.

Right place right time.

[Larry Francis]

More pics

[Capt. BassinLou]

Wow Larry!! Heck of an outing!!  Sorry you lost that big girl. I lost a big one like that in similar fashion couple of years ago. It hurts!  Thank you for sharing your report with us.

[FlatsNBay]

Heck of a day. Congrats Larry.

[RangerAndBass]

Congrats Larry. Sorry about the biggest one

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