Thread: Florida done ruint me

That seems to be the best way to summarize my week trip to Okeechobee and the Everglades. It has "ruint" bream fishing for me. We left last Friday at 7 am and stayed at a hotel in Davenport Fla where my fishing buddy, Rick, joined us to make 4 boats and 8 guys. The next day we went into Clewiston to the Roland Martin Marina and resort. This is a fishing town, even the lights on the street poles have fish on them


We had planned to fish the "O" for bream and then go to the Glades for Oscars, but the fishing was slow on the lake and high winds made it difficult, so we headed to the Everglades and put in at Everglades Holiday Park, a popular tourist gateway to the glades via dozens of airboat tours, which we were subject to off and on. I must be in 50 different people's cameras as they snapped pictures of us fishing the canals.
I was suspicious of my friends claim that they bought crickets by the thousands, but the first day he bought 3000 and put them a "cricket condo" which they brought with them. All told we used about 7000.

We hit the mother lode as the Oscars were biting fast and furious and we caught between 500 and 600 the first day. Note these are an invasive species like the white perch are to us and the DNR wants as many removed as possible. We did our share. Here is my cooler from one day's fishing.


Below the cooler shot is a strange looking catfish I caught. He went back in, wasn't sure what he was. The next fish is a beautiful transplant called a Mayan Cichlid. They are intermixed with the Oscars and both species are delicious to eat.
The next cooler shot is a 48 qt. cooler filled with fillets from one days fishing. The next shot is the Oscar which was our main target. Most weighed around a pound, with several going to 2 pounds. As I said this has certainly tainted my view of typical bream fishing in SC. These guys are like having a 5 lb hybrid bream/striper mix on your line. I found the perfect outfit for them was my 10 ft. B&M jig pole with 12# braided line. We used slip corks and crickets initially, but later caught them on Beetle Spins and even one on a small crank bait.
Good news was there is an excellent cleaning station at the marina and all 8 of us could work at once. These guys have been coming down here for 34 years so the had a routine down pat and it did not take as long as you might think to clean that many fish, but still 2 hours one day was a lot of work.
We left Clewiston at 4 this morning and I pulled into my house at 4 this afternoon. It was a long drive but worth every minute and was a lot of fun. We quit each day by 2 so we could come back and clean the fish and relax a bit before we ate dinner. (It was a 60 mile drive to the Everglades from our condo but once you leave Clewiston, there is no place to stay) We cooked at the condos each night and I probably gained a pound or two that I don't need.

Wow! Now that's a great report! Thanks for taking the time to thoroughly record this for us.

Was the fishing great because of the spawn or do they bite year round?