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Stick Marsh & Farm 13
Capt. George Welcome
May 25, 2001
Stick Marsh-Farm 13 - Freshwater Fishing Report
The launch yesterday was quite uneventful. Mosquitoes were thick at the ramp and the air was cooler than it had been for the last week or so. Water levels were up slightly due to a few storms that had moved through the area the day before but nothing so significant as to evoke a joyous hooray. The balance of the day however was to be anything but uneventful.
Jack Goldsmith and I had already rigged for the possibilities that had been the patterns on the Stick Marsh lately. Buzz baits, chug bugs, spinner baits, and plastics were ready and waiting, to be used as called for. We both started with chug baits but quickly changed to buzz baits. Working through the brush towards Twin Palms we hauled the buzz baits through the densest stick-ups we could cast to. As the stick-ups thinned out we hit pay dirt!
Jack was working his buzz bait next to a heavy group of sticks and missed a blow up that spread a boil over about a 4-foot circle. Casting to the same area the bass followed but wouldn’t hit. 5 minutes later a cast about 15 feet from the same spot brought this enormous bass onto my buzz bait. She launched herself into the air about 3 feet out of the water and went head first into a large area of heavy hydrilla. The hook was dislodged immediately by the hydrilla and our first bass of the day swam off. If I had to guess I would say she was over 12 but then those kind always look big so I “ain’t gonna say it”!
That fish bit at about 6:30 AM.
By 6:32 AM we had our next fish to the boat and from that time until about 2:00 PM it was non-stop catching. During the entire day a couple of bass came on spinner bait including one of the big ones. All of the rest of the bass that were caught hit on buzz baits and they came one right after the other. The longest span of time between bites never exceeded five minutes. If all the strikes made it to the boat we would have had 100 plus bass but even with the misses my guess puts the catch at around 70 bass. The impressive thing about the catch however is that we boated 6, and had on another 4 of the Stick Marsh’s finest. Photos of these fish can be seen in the Lunker gallery for April-May on my pages. Of the four that were lost, only one dislodged the hook due to cover and the rest were just poor hook sets.
Jack is a veteran bass fisherman and as he said, “it just doesn’t get any better”. We had a slight breeze for most the day until the wind came late in the day. Bugs were kept down and the fish were biting. Looks like our summer bite is coming on strong. See you out there.
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