Thread: Lake Manatee... Success at last!!!

Got on the water around 7. I wanted to try under the bridge first thing but there was people there so I headed east. Went that ways for a little while and set up on some drifts with no luck. Only bite we had was a catfish that yanked my gfs rod out of the boat in 10 feet of water, deeper than we had the bobber set. So we stayed in that area for awhile and she spotted the bobber close to shore so we went and scooped it up and landed the catfish. started pulling the other way and somehow it was hung on the bottom. The 4 lb test didn't take much of a pull before it popped...gone. Went back to the bridge around 12 and did manage 2 barely keepers there.
From there we drifted to the west trying to stay on the channel. There was other boats in the area but I didn't see anyone catching. We came across an area in 13 feet on the edge of 20 feet that was holding bait clouds and marked a couple fish. So we set up to drift and instantly got hit. That drift produced 2 nice ones but then we got off the area. So after a couple drifts and a couple more keepers we realized the area was not very big and we were out of the fish. So the next drift as soon as we had a bite I slid the anchor in and for the next 2 hrs we smashed them. We ended up with 25 keepers. we caught them in 13 ft on gold hooks, maribou jigs in solid green and white with a pink head all with minnows on bobbers 3 to 7 foot deep. These were the cheap maribou type jigs you get from Walmart. They didn't want my fancy jigs.
Also if you left your hook hanging over the side of the boat the sunshine bass kept snatching them. I kept a couple that were gut hooked.