The past 2 weeks has seen some very good fishing action on Butler Chain, as well as a few days of some tough fishing. With a couple days of what was basically blue bird skies, made for a lot of moving around in order to catch some good quality bass. Days with the blue bird skies had us working deeper waters with live bait, fishing waters 10 to 20 feet deep in order to get good catches. The day before what is supposed to be our last cold front rolled thru, we had some great overcast skies, and that triggered some of the best top water action of the year so far. Lakes Butler and Louise were the top lakes when it came to the schooling action, and the High Roller Lures were getting creamed with 16 bass making it into the boat in 4 hours using the 4.25 High Roller in Perch and the 3.25 Rip Roller Florida Special doing all the catching, with bass weighing in from 2 to 3 ½ pounds.
Weekend saw the front roll thru and the bite did slow down pretty good, but with patience and persistence, the bass still did bite, with the bite very slow to start the day and picking up as the day warmed. As the Bligh brothers saw, Butler Chain has some good fishing action, as they spent 2 good days on the water catching some good bass, with Dennis landing the big bass coming in at 5.01 pounds and getting bragging rights between the three of them.
The soft plastics bite has been doing good, most of our catches have been coming using the Gitem Warlocks in June Bug and the Gitem Shads in Watermellon Red Shad, both with small pegged bullet weights and worked slowly. Spinner baits and Yozuri Rattlin Vibes have also produced some quality bass to 4 pounds in and around grass beds and eel grass, as well as scattered lily pads, areas of heavy lily pads have been best worked with the shads or warlocks real slow, almost dead sticked.
We ended the week with Shawn working artificial baits working Lake Butler and Lake Chase. Gitem Curly 10's in Red Shad were the ticket to catching bass, although the numbers and size were down, as we experienced what seemed to be 3 different weather patterns. The day started out picture perfect with a slight breeze and heavy clouds, which fast turned into blue bird skies and no breeze to speak of. Catching a few here and there and missing several good bass as they came unbuttoned deep in the grass beds, and then the final weather change hit, stronger winds, all three weather patterns seemed to hit within 3 hours and definitely turned the bass of to hitting. Bites most of the day were very light, and you had to let them have the baits in order to land the catch. Grass bed edges or deep into the grass beds was the way to get them.
Till my next report,
Tight lines and great fishing!
Capt Tim Fey
