We all know summertime is HOT and the fishing can be slow; super slow at times. However, two weekends ago, my granddad and I continued our tournament season on Crooked Lake in Frostproof, Florida and the fishing wasn’t as slow as we thought it might be.
The water in Crooked Lake is super clear and visibility is around six to eight feet in most places, making it a prime fishery to throw a hard jerkbait. We practiced fished the lake the day prior to the tournament and used Rapala Shadow Rap jerkbaits to catch fourteen bass in a little over four hours. Our biggest fish weighed almost four pounds. We’d located several areas where we thought we could catch fish and were feeling confident going into tournament day.
On tournament morning, we began by throwing topwater plugs along some isolated grass clumps on the north end of the lake. We caught a few keeper fish on that pattern, before moving to another area to fish jerkbaits for a while. We started catching a bunch of fish and filled out limit quickly, but it wasn’t a very big limit. The two of us had caught nearly thirty bass total by 2:30pm but were just unable to put a large fish in the boat.
We unfortunately had a couple of missed opportunities, as we’d lost a multiple key fish that would’ve really helped our cause.
We only weighed in 9.55 pounds of bass, however, we weren’t the only competitors to struggle that day. We finished in 2nd place and were just a little more than a pound out of 1st place. We were pleasantly surprised with our finish and were shown yet again that you don’t have to catch a huge bag of fish to have a chance at winning or placing.
Even though summertime is hot, the fish will still bite when the time is right! Early in the morning and late in the evening are the best times of day to avoid the heat and make the most of your time on the water. Happy fishing and keep your hooks wet!
