Bass fishing secret? It's the pits
Fishing reclaimed phosphate pits will guarantee tugs at your line
By SUSAN COCKING
scocking@MiamiHerald.com
Sue Cocking / Miami Herald Staff
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist Eric Johnson said the bounty of bass, like the four-pounder at left, has caused a rush on the phosphate pits at Tenoroc. Also abundant at the saltwater tracts are catfish and bluegill. The fish grow quickly thanks to the nutrient-rich water.
IF YOU GO
• Reservations to fish Tenoroc Fish Management Area, near Lakeland, can be made Friday through Monday by calling the FWC at 863-499-2422. Fee is $3.
• Mosaic Fish Management Area, near Fort Meade, is open Friday through Monday from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. There is no fee, and there are no advance reservations. Fishing is on a first-come, first-served basis at the check station, which opens at 6 a.m. For more information, call the number listed above.
LAKELAND -- Here's a little secret that some bass-fishing TV hosts don't bother to disclose when they're catching lunker after hawg using their sponsor companies' goofy-looking lures: Many of these huge fish are coming from private phosphate pits that you -- an ordinary angler -- are not allowed to fish.
But you can fish the next best thing: reclaimed phosphate pits in central Florida, which are open to the public and managed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The agency's motto: ``We're shortening the time between bites.''
Since the early 1990s, the FWC has managed public freshwater fisheries at Tenoroc, a reclaimed phosphate mining area near Lakeland. Since then, the Tenoroc Fish Management Area has expanded to 23 lakes covering more than 2,000 acres. The most recent additions are the Saddle Creek and Bridgewater tracts -- totaling more than 200 acres -- which opened to the public last year.
In 2001, the FWC entered into a management agreement with the Mosaic Fertilizer Co. to open 12 reclaimed and unreclaimed pits totaling 650 acres of water about 45 minutes south of Tenoroc, near Fort Meade.
The reason phosphate pits are so coveted by freshwater anglers is that the fish -- largemouth bass, crappie (speckled perch), channel catfish, bluegill, and shell cracker -- grow fat quickly on the abundance of nutrients released by digging up the phosphate rock from the earth. FWC biologists learned that if you close lakes periodically, implement catch-and-release regulations for bass, set bag and slot limits for other species, and limit the number of anglers and boats, then the fish would remain (relatively) stupid and (somewhat) easy to catch.
BIG HAUL
I got to fish a portion of the Bridgewater and Mosaic areas recently with FWC biologists Danon Moxley and Eric Johnson. While it wasn't a slam dunk, we caught and released more than 50 bass up three pounds in about four hours at Mosaic's 60-acre Coulter Lake. And I caught and released a 3.8-pounder in an evening of fishing Bridgewater's 24-acre Fish Hook Lake. For public areas, I'd say we fared pretty well.
Coulter has been closed for a while to give the FWC a chance to improve its boat-lunching facilities. Moxley expressed surprise when the bass did not immediately jump all over his black Johnson spoon with white plastic trailer.
''As hungry as these fish have to be, you'd think they'd nail the heck out of it,'' Moxley said.
But a few minutes later, Johnson caught and released a 2.7-pounder on his gold Johnson spoon and trailer. Throughout the morning, the fishing steadily improved, especially around some high humps lined with pennywort in the middle of the lake. I caught and released about 10 bass up to 1 ½ pounds with a blue-and-silver Rat-L-Trap, but the spoons seemed to be the ticket that day.
Fishing state-managed phosphate pits is for adventurous anglers, not those who like to be -- pun intended -- spoon-fed. Few guides operate in the Tenoroc or Mosaic fish management areas, so anglers must bring their own boats and tackle. Some pits allow fishing from a bank only or from canoe and kayak -- no motors allowed. And the topography of the pits is nothing like either the natural lakes or the drainage canals that South Florida anglers are accustomed to.
''You have to look for humps,'' Moxley said. ``It's not trees -- it's the length a dragline drags. The depth can drop from two feet to 20 feet in the length of a boat. And the point doesn't stop at the end of the cattails. It's too deep for cattails to grow.''
Wade fishing is not allowed because the bottom usually drops steeply close to shore. And, unlike some natural lakes, fishing in the dead center of a pit can be more productive than sticking to the shoreline.
PROPER BAIT
As for lure choices, Moxley said:``If you're a freshwater fisherman, you keep trying different baits. You will come across something that will catch fish.''
In my case, it was a chartreuse Larry Nixon Bomber Model A crankbait that yielded the largest bass in 2 ½ days -- 3.8 pounds -- at Fish Hook.
''This lake has been getting a lot of fishing pressure because the success rates are good,'' Johnson noted. ``These bass have seen a lot of lures in the past month and a half.''
So I guess that means I'll have to try something really different and novel the next time I visit -- maybe that Barbie Doll lure I saw on the cover of National Enquirer a couple of years ago. In a phosphate pit, you just never know.