Thread: Nice Afternoon on lake brentwood

A friend of mine from work invited me over to fish on lake brentwood in Sebring yesterday. There was a light wind and high 80's temp but water was pretty calm looking. This is a private,lightly fished lake .probably an old phosphate pit. We used my little 12 ft jon boat and first headed to a little stand of young water oaks at a grassy edge of the lake. Depth finder showed 10 ft at about 40 ft offshore..five as we got closer. He was using Berkeley wigglers and I was using nightcrawlers. He got a few hits on those but not many. I was casting close to the tree trunks in the water and got a hit almost every cast. Most fish were little bait stealers .I did catch about five worth keeping in the basket and those I released at the end of the day even. I didn't try any artificials but those probably would have worked fine There were a mix of shellcrackers(the biggest of the fish that were keepers) and bluegills. We only saw one bass strike the whole day. we were rained on for bit. Then we to explored the lake a little further. We found it to be 23 ft in the center over a very long stretch of lake. There are a few docks and high grass on some of the edges. Almost no pads. Bottom structure ..at least with my cheapy depth finder..was mostly flat. The finder was CONSTANTLY giving a fish beep and there were fish symbols everywhere but I'm still not sure how accurate this one is as to actual fish. We have no idea yet what the pattern of the fish is here . Any tips on figuring that out?? We just had a few hours in the evening to do it . We are planning on more trips especially a few morning trips..might be more bass then. I was fun exploring a new lake and at least we know some of what type of fish we're going to find and one area where they are actively biting. All in all..a relaxing day ..great company, nice scenery,a cool breeze..and we didn't get skunked!.
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well..I discovered it's not brentwood after all..It's lake Byrd!! Found the name on the GPS in daughters car one day..Cool! We went out again Monday afternoon around 6:30. There was a storm front on the way but we got in three hours before being chased off the lake by it. I could not get any minnows because the bait place was closed on Mondays so Sunday evening we plan to go back with some and put them in his live well, He has an awesome boat! Much bigger than mine with programmable trolling motor and 70 horse Yamaha. It made it a LOT more comfortable..Plus he has a top on it. We started in the shallows at the trees where we caught bluegills and shell crackers before but no luck. I had a small bass break off my line but that was it there. We must have caught them bedding last month. We then tried lures and red wigglers at 20 ft deep mark. Fish were holding at 8-14 but after five passes we couldn't convince anything to bite. So we gave up that pursuit and just explored a little. He wanted to check out a cove at one end. It was 6 ft as we entered the cove ..then a sudden drop to 12!..then after a few seconds back up to 7. Apparently there is a deep hole there..That will be explored more next time out. We switched to bass baits. He used a rattle trap...I used a rubber frog. After about three cast he got a bass just under two lbs. He ended up with three..the biggest 3 lbs. There were hidden logs and brush in about 6 ft of water and we both fished those with rattletraps after he caught the first one. We also had to keep one step ahead of a 4 ft gator!! He chased both of ours lures from time to time..Much faster than I thought he'd be!

The weather finally caught up with us so we had o head in to shore.A lot of fun again and learnig more about the lake. We still don't know much about the crappie population but will keep trying!!!