Highlands Bass Anglers
Saturday, March 4th marked the third tournament of the 2023 season for the Highlands Bass Anglers bass fishing club on Lake June.
Saturday was an unusually windy day, with gusts exceeding twenty miles an hour. Bass fishermen know, wind can be your friend or your enemy.
Even under these conditions, someone always find the fish.
The team of Bud Cipiletti and Alec Morrison weighed in an astonishing thirty pounds and twelve ounces! Let me repeat that! Thirty pounds and twelve ounces!
Their five fish limit was anchored by a nine pound four ounce TrophyCatch bass which also won the big bass pot.
Second Place honors went to the team of Tom McGinnis and Dave Maurice with five bass weighing in at 18 pounds and 15 ounces.
Rounding out the top three places was the team of Angel Ojeda and Justin LaRosa with a five fish limit weighing thirteen pounds and 3 ounces.
Anyone familiar with bass tournaments will tell you, a thirty pound bag is worth crowing about, and to catch it on a blustery day like last Saturday is an amazing feat!
Congratulations to the winners and to everyone who fished the tournament. The next event will be on Lake Kissimmee.
Lake Istokpoga
I have had a few trips on Lake Istokpoga over the last couple of weeks and the fishing has been great on some days, and terrible on others.
As long as I can remember, we’ve never had a winter like this year.
Temperatures in the mid to upper 80’s and overnight lows in the 60’s have warmed the waters much faster than normal, affecting the spawn in ways I can’t imagine.
Water temperatures generally fall into the low 60’s and even the high 50’s through December and January and slowly begin to warm up by February, but this year, water temperatures increased much, much sooner.
Bass begin to spawn in temperatures as low as 62 degrees, with 69 being the ideal. We blew right past that weeks ago.
Yet the bass are still spawning. A few days ago I caught some fat females who had yet to spawn, and a few males in very shallow water, still on beds.
With the weather reasonably stable, you would think every day the fishing would be about the same, yet one day, the fishing is great, and the next day you feel like there are no bass left in the lake.
Like they say, that’s why they call it fishin’ and not catchin’.
Editor’s note: Don Norton, often referred to as “Red”, is a bass fishing guide, custom rod builder and tournament bass fisherman. He was the owner of two local fishing tackle stores, REDS in Avon Park and REDS II in Sebring, and in addition to previously writing for Highlands Today the NEWS-SUN and the Coastal Angler, he also taught evening classes at the South Florida State College in Avon Park on bass fishing techniques and custom rod building. Don is also an author with four books; Fish Tales, Just Add Water, Jan-Jun and Jul-Dec 2022 and Queenie – The Legend of Lake Istokpoga. He lives in Golf Hammock with his wife Lexie.
