I DO NOT have this bite figured out and by no means can speak as an authority. Something is always bedding on Okeechobee….bass, bluegill, talapia/goggle-eyes, and Asian armored catfish. There is a cycle and way of life in the lake, in all lakes I suppose, that mirrors this to some level. You notice bass beds become bluegill beds or talapia/goggle-eye beds. The beds get re-used. Sometime I’ll share what I do with the 3:16 Rising Son around bedding bass, but for now, just wanted to share a nice one I got on Okeechobee over the weekend. It’s NOT easy out there for me. Okeechobee is on a fickle cycle for a swimbait guy. Lots of algae bloom, weird color water, bad wind, overgrown and choked out. The good black clear water I like to fish is really hard to come by. The fish are more ‘outside’ grass edge oriented and ideally, I’d have nice black clear water, or inside grass pools with enough depth and life to hold fish. The bite right now, as usual, is a flipping and punching bite. That is how you will win on Okeechobee. If tide and time completely come together and you make the right moves during a 4 day event to pull it off, I think a sight fish/swimbait bite could beat a pure punching bite. I missed my opportunity, twice, at the Tour level to prove and show that. I have nightmares about it. It haunts me, and that is no joke.
See the light spots on the bottom int he bottom 1/3rd of this photo? Those are the ‘beds’ that get recycled during the year, bass>bluegill>talapia>etc
I am fishing in and around the Monkey Box, Harney Pond, North Shore area and I found some big hydrilla beds with clean water and bedding bluegill, that is all I can tell you. Hydrilla seems to be key for me, and I know was key for Brent Ehrler when the Tour was here and he finished 2nd. And Lord knows I could/should be punching, I just love the challenge of finding swimbait fish. The bite is way more a flipping bite and pitching jigs at the reeds. Anyway, I’ve found some bluegill beds (I think) in some thick hydrilla fields, and the water is by far the best black water I have found, and the water is fishable. The grass is not topped out in some pools and you can swim a bait thru it quite nicely. The 3:16 Sunfish (the Bluegill color is killer too) is a favorite bait of mine. I fish it with a 1/0 ST-36 Owner Stinger Hook, and 65# Braid, M Action 8 footer, and a Curado 300. It has a very down the line, nose down swim, which is amazing for a line thru bait with a 45 degree angle of attack between hook and line thru insert in the bait, that you’d think would bias more upward. The bait does not swim up or plane up, it really keeps its depth and drive ‘right’ on the straight grind. You don’t have to be overly technical to get the right down the line swim out of the bait, and can stall, snatch and buzz/burn it along too. It’s just a great bait, and I’m learning that May/June is bed time for bluegill all over the South, including Florida. You need to be throwing bluegill baits, and the post-spawn time of the bass tends to lead into the bluegill/brim spawn, which tends to be when the heat is setting in, mid Spring style. I catch fish on the 3:16 Sunfish and 22nd Century Bluegill right now.
Notice the round and honeycomb nature of the bluegill beds.
The Florida sun has been quite nice lately. Mid to Low 80s, but the wind has been relentless. Keeping it simple and setting my boat down 2 minutes from the launch ramp was a good decision. I ‘live’ in Lakeport on weekends.Blood sweat and tears, literally.I have been working hard out there, glad to get a good bite
Kyle Meyer: High School, Swimbaits, and Bait Companies
I think I met Kyle via Facebook. When I see a guy catching 8″ Huddleston fish, and I don’t care where, I try to pay attention. Kyle showed me a picture one time and I immediately recognized it as a pond in my old neighborhood in Roswell, GA. It was funny. Kyle is in 11th grade, he runs his own bait company (BigBoy Bait Co), and he catches fish on 3:16 Rising Sons and 8″ Huddleston Deluxe Trout baits. I really enjoy the passion and the drive these High School and College anglers have…both for the tournament styles of fishing and the bigbait styles of fishing.
Notice ice on the shoreline, and a stud on the 3:16 Rising Son. Good one Kyle.
Kyle shared a recent school assignment with me, a paper on Mickey Ellis and the 3:16 Lure Company. Read it below. I like the simple, well synthesized and organized way he explains bigbait fishing and tells a story. He does a very good job of educating someone who doesn’t know much about fishing, the key things they need to understand and connect with. I’m impressed with Kyle’s fishing, his writing and his bait company.
Here is Kyle in his own words/his Bio:
“Kyle Meyer here, a little about myself. First off, I am a senior in High School, at Glynn Academy in Saint Simons Island, Georgia. I strongly believe in doing what you love, and right now I am doing just that. I have been handpouring/injecting custom baits for almost 3 years now, and have started a small business in the industry, Big Boy Baits. I am extremely interested in swimbaits and bigbaits, but not just fishing them…the industry, the makers, the processes, and the dedication that goes into these baits is largely unknown to the general public, and I want to change that. Handmade swimbaits are not just another product on the website, they are works of art, masterpieces of mechanics and realism, and useful tools in your arsenal. I also believe in “doing all you can”. I also run a Youtube Video channel, The Southbound Fishing show, to document my journey, the success and failure. Along with my business, I plan to unroll many other projects to the Southern Swimbait fisherman, to help and guide the fresh generation of fishermen, as they are by far the most important to the sport. Thanks for reading, I hope to hear from you soon.” KM
Kyle Meyer with gorgeous fish caught on one Big Boy Baits Paddle Stick
The Success of Mickey Ellis and 3:16 Lure Company
by Kyle Meyer
Mickey Ellis is a man of dedication, of passion, and of perfection. For 13 years, Mickey has been selling the biggest and the most innovative swimbaits on the market. These are not your normal fishing lures, these baits are giants in themselves. These baits are 4-12 inches long, ultra-realistic fish imitations that catch some of the biggest Largemouth Bass in the world. Every bait is handmade and handcrafted by Mickey himself. The question is, how did he get here? Years before this business ever was dreamed of, Mickey was a hardcore street motorcycle racer, on a path that certainly did not lead to a successful business and a profound love for God and Christianity. What changed and took him to divine success and the forefront of trophy West Coast bass fishing?
One should note that without work, there can be no progress. To say that a specific person achieved great success without work and dedication is a very false statement. To say that uncontrollable factors can influence the work and goals of a successful person is much more understandable. Mickey Ellis has everything it takes: drive, vision, insight, and most of all, timing. He came into the swimbait industry at just the right time. If he had had his “vision” to make baits 10 years earlier, he might have just made some plastic worms and called it a day. But no, he came into the bait scene just as things were really exploding. Swimbait fishing was a almost a secret cult, barely practiced at all outside of the clear California reservoirs, but it was not to stay that way for long. Mickey came along at precisely the right time, with precisely the right mindset needed for the time period. Technicality, realism, and action were all becoming the focus of his competitors, and he had the experience and timing to pull it all off at the same time. It sounds like another American businessman that took a passion and ran with it, but behind the scenes it is much more.
“I rented a condo on Lake Mission Viejo. I would go out there on the dock every night and fly-line those big Bass Assassins, and catch 10 pounders or better every time”, Mickey says in his interview with Matt Peters of the movie Southern Trout Eaters. Just for reference, a lot of fishermen in the US will never catch or see a 10 pound Largemouth Bass. It is a fish that could break lake and potentially state records all over the country, and Mickey Ellis was catching them on a regular basis, in his backyard. A quote from Malcolm Gladwell reads: “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” Catching these giant fish in his own backyard using his own sought-out methods gave Mickey the skill and knowledge of his subject to create a bait so well-suited for the task at hand that it would become one of the top baits in its category: The Mission Fish. To this day the Mission Fish is still one of the most widely fished weedless swimbaits to ever hit the market, and it has exploded the 3:16 Lure Company, Mickey’s business.
Location also greatly affected the success of Mickey and his business. The Southern California area is home to some of the best Largemouth Bass fishing in the country, with 20 out of the 25 largest bass ever caught coming from the Southern California region. That’s right, 80 percent of the largest fish EVER caught came from the local area where Mickey was from. In fact, number 14 on the list came from Lake Mission Viejo; the same lake Mickey practiced and honed his techniques on. This is a perfect example of the advantageous location, also known as being “in the right place at the right time”. Just as Mickey started his bait business, the niche industry of big swimbaits really exploded and his creations became some of the most sought-after baits in the big-bait world. The baits that are created by the master lure designers of California, folks such as Matt Servant of Mattlures, Jerry Rago of Rago Baits, Scott Whitmer of 22nd Century Baits, Ken Huddleston of Huddleston and of course Mickey Ellis can be found selling for hundreds of dollars sometimes, and they were almost all handmade or hand carved in that time period. When thousands of people want a product that takes hours to make, it creates a bottleneck effect and the demand will always meet the supply. If there had been 500 or 1,000 bait makers in Southern California at that time, who knows who would have made it. Maybe instead of a single devoted person crafting artful baits, it would have been a large scale factory producing cheap knockoffs. But instead, the industry flourished and a unique niche was created to fill the makers’ lists, and competition ensued, driving each man to create a better, more innovative bait, and the technology advanced faster than ever before, with new features, paint jobs, and of course innovation coming to the table. A skilled group of designers and crafters developed this industry from the ground up, and Mickey was right in the middle of it, at just the right time, with just the right ideas.
The success of the 3:16 Lure Company and the man behind it, Mickey Ellis cannot be totally attributed to the cases of “successful phenomenon”, but there are many factors that did make the pendulum swing the right way, and coupled with an insane drive to produce the wildest and most innovative baits, made a machine of a company that to this day provides the public with some of the best trophy bass lures made, and there seems to be no sign of stopping. KM
<END>
3 more studs Kyle caught on his own baits.
Par 7 or 8, Huddleston Fish
Thank you Kyle for sharing and best of luck in your future endeavors with fishing. Go for it man. You live in a great part of the country to catch fish! Hope you got an “A” on your paper and you have many days of Rising Son and 8″ Huddie bites. MP
It’s getting really hot, really muggy, and the grass is getting way thick. I always look for the cleanest/blackest water I can find with the most beautiful hydrilla, and usually the fish are there. I found a few instances where I could fish the XL Nezumaa around isolated clumps of reeds and buggy whips. The bottom is just carpeted with wonderful hydrilla, that really good green hard and crisp hydrilla, and the water is by far the deepest and clearest water I’m fishing the XL Nezumaa along walls of reeds too, and just trying to get a big bite where I can. As the heat sets in, I highly suggest rats and big wakebaits, like MS Slammers or 3:16 Hardbaits. Big topwater baits basically, the can catch a big one at high noon, blaring heat in the right conditions. And rat baits are super fun to fish-my favorite. Just super fun fishing and helps endure brutal conditions and heat.
I do like fishing certain bigbaits on snaps. I really find the Owner Hyper Cross Locks fit this bait, and my application beautifully. I like to walk and stall my rats. I do like to slow reel and wake them too, but man, I just can’t help but make that bait look alive and struggling out there. I only have small pockets of fishable water, I don’t usually have long runs of clean swim lanes to bring a top water bait thru, a bait like the XL Nezumaa, I can throw it right on the ‘point’ of a good isolated clump of reeds and usually there will be a hole in the hydrilla around the reeds enough to fish it out a few feet or more. You just don’t get 15-30 feet of swim most times, you only get 2-6 feet at times to work with, so you need a stallable bait, and a topwater is the bait, the ultimate stall bait. So around grass, or isolated layown trees, or around shade pockets, you want a bait that hangs in the little ‘pool’ you have to work with, and where too, you can get maximum action out of your bait when you do decide to walk it and really jerk it. The XL Nezumaa is violent and raucous, and you get a lot of action and noise and the bait only moved 4-6″ toward you. And with the right wind or bow in your line, you can float a bait like the XL Nezumaa rat in place. I am fishing 80# straight braid on my XL Nezumaa and recommend a Low Down Custom Rods 8′ XH if you haven’t ever tried one of those rods for lobbing a BIG bait like the XL Nezumaa or Slide Swimmer 250.
That fish inhaled the jig. Notice the sparse reed and little pool. That is where the fish will bed in the good areas, and the jig is an excellent bait on Okeechobee to pitch around the sparse stuff.
It was brought to my attention from a friend that I didn’t do a blog post about my Okeechobee Everstart tournament. My mind has been busy dealing with all the things of starting back to work at a new job, finding an apartment, finding furniture (I arrived with a coffee mug, and a ton of fishing gear, of course), and just getting settled into a new life and lifestyle. Okeechobee has been in a funky cycle, but don’t let that fool you. I have a feeling the FLW Tour event coming up out of Clewiston is going to be another slug fest. Okeechobee has had really high water, and crazy thick grass. But with cooler nights and days, the grass is thinning out, mats are literally melting away, and things are changing, last I heard and last I fished.
Day One:
I have a huge open water area I’ve been fishing in the Bird Island/North Shore area that I was fishing last year, that I found a good school of fish holding in. I could not find the jig fish that were loaded on Observation Shoal last year, and the Monkey Box itself, was almost completely choked out, and the areas that were fishable, just didn’t seem to have fish like they normally do. Not to say they aren’t there, I just didn’t find many areas with fish in practice. So to Bird Island, I went. I wanted to throw the 3:16 Sunfish and throw the Magnum Speed Worm in this open water and I figured I could usually get one good bite a day doing it, and come up with 12-14 pounds. I knew I wasn’t on winning fish, so you just go with the best you got. The Magnum Speed Worm, pegged with a 1/4 ounce weight, and a big 6/0 hook can be swam thru the eel grass and hydrilla, but it’s also got this great ‘power Texas Rig’ fishability where you hop, drop, yo-yo and then swim the bait thru the grass. I was killing them on the Magnum Speed Worm, and don’t be shocked if you hook a big one on that bait. I was buzzing the outside edges of some pepper grass clumps with the 3:16 Sunfish, and sure enough, I got one almost 6 pounds to come out and choke the bait. I fished loose, had fun and just made the most of my bites and weighed 14-8 or something, and was stoked to be in the Top 30.
The 3:16 Sunfish is not weedless, but if you’ll notice the sparse reeds, there is also hydrilla on the bottom, I look for ‘swim lanes’ and buzz the bait thru the grass in areas like this. Not a giant, but 3-4 pounders are always good, and fun to catch, especially on braid.
Day Two:
Back to Bird Island. The bite started much slower. I had to grind to get something going. I keep telling myself I need to fish looser in tournaments. There is a great article Gary Dobyns once did about ‘Fishing Chicken’…google it, maybe it can be found. Bottom line, don’t get so caught up in your area or gameplan you don’t bounce if things aren’t going right. I made a good decision to head over to an area I knew had a few fish, and abandoned my best water for a while. Good move. We immediately got into some good keeper fish on the Magnum Speed Worm and I had some boils on the 3:16 Sunfish. I filled up my limit and then bounced back to my good water. The bite seemed to be much better later in the day, and on Day 2 I was a late flight, so had an extra hour to fish. Well, I got a line jump bite on the Magnum Speed Worm as my bait was falling back to the bottom in the sweetest deepest section of some eel grass. I swing, she aint moving, and I knew it was a biggun from the bite and from the hookset. Well, finally after a good 2-3 second tug of war, my rig comes flinging back at me, and my hook is completely opened up and bent out, hook point rolled over and I knew I’d just lost to a beast. Bummer. I didn’t get my big bite on Day 2. Well, I culled a few times and ultimately weighed 12-6 or something, and ended up 29th place for the event.
The Top 10
The Top 10 weigh in was cool to watch. You always learn something when you hear how the guys who really got it done caught ’em. The jig bite was on, just not in the areas of the lake they had bit for me last year, and I didn’t spend enough time (much shorter practice this year than in years past). J&S was clearly an area where the big fish had moved into and the guys that slowed down and pitched jigs and senkos and creature baits in the right stretches, got some big bites. I have never seen a weigh in where there was a tie. Trevor Fitzgerald was looking like he would win, but homeboy pulled out a 9 pounder or something stupid as his last fish, and they tied…but since homeboy had the lead going into Day 3, that was the tie breaker. I can only imagine how Trevor felt. Ouch. I wish the guys fishing the Tour a lot of luck out there. I think it could be an awesome event. The fishing after the tournament was getting better and better, and since off limits, things got kinda cool and cold, and the way Okeechobee flows this time of year, a good cold snap is good because when it warms back up, the fish go nuts. And the big ones moves in.
Shaye Baker had a 19 pound day 2, snatching chatterbaits and rattle traps on the outside grass edges in a good deep to shallow spot with that black water.
Shaye Baker
Want to see something cool, check out the below video. This is Shaye Baker’s Day 2 fishing, getting it done snatching ChatterBaits in some outside grass. I have gotten to know Shaye the last year or so, and I am impressed with his fishing and aptitude toward contributing meaningful content to the world of fishing. Shaye is on his way to a fantastic career in the world of fishing and media, and he’s got a lot of good things brewing at both FLW and BASS, so expect to see his name often as part of the few guys who know how to cover bass fishing, and sharing information—and doing it with style and soul. Shaye finished 11th in the event, and is a solid fisherman too, but is wise enough to realize the challenges of making a living with a rod and reel. You cannot just be good, you have to be exceptional.
Oh yeah, Casey Martin….Congrats to Casey, with a 6th Place finish and a solid showing on Okeechobee. I’m telling you, this guy is going to crush it in 2013 fishing the Tour as a rookie. In fact, FLW is going to be sending a film crew to follow Casey around and document his rookie season, the life on the road and the fishing part. Casey is exceptional. His ability to keep things simple, focus on his strengths, and make gameday decisions is impressive. Casey went out with his flipping and punching rods and got 7 pound bites on Day 1&2 and put them in the boat, and that is the difference between good and exceptional on tournament day. Follow Casey at: caseymartinfishing.com
This is my 5th season on Okeechobee, and getting ready for my final tournament for a while. Okeechobee is a good 2+ feet higher than it was the last few years we’ve been here. The lake is choked out with grass. The low water years caused the grass to grow big and tall along the shore/super shallows, then add the 2-3 feet of water, and you have a jungle. It can be very difficult to get around, fish, and just get a feel for Okeechobee right now. There is a ton of punching and flipping water, with the current conditions. This is probably the worst swimbait bite I’ve experienced at Okeechobee in the 5 years. It’s just really hard to find fishable water where the fish are living, where you can swim a bait around and thru. Add to that, with vegetation that is 3-5 foot high above the water line, it can be really hard to visually see places you want to get in and fish behind the grass lines. I have been poking into various spots a bizzillion times, only to do a u-turn and come out because the magic pool was not indeed behind the reeds….
With the high water, in some places, the 3:16 Sunfish gets down a little deeper, and is working for me. Oddly, by fishing in 4 feet (vs. 1-2 feet) I’m finding I’ve got to get a bait down to ’em move. They won’t come up top for the other bigbaits I’m throwing. And it happens that Okeechobee fish hate bluegill/sunfish.
It’s not all doom and gloom. I’ve had some decent days, and once again, find that I’m having to make adjustments to get it done. I think I can catch 5 fish both days, and hopefully am good for a big bite or two, but without a big bite, I’m talking 8-10 pounds or so….But most guys are struggling too. It’s just an off year, thick mats of grass, that of course make for good punching at times, but so thick you cannot get your trolling motor thru or do anything but flip or throw frogs over it. One of the keys to the swimbait bite for me has always been finding the best bedding areas. This has been the worst year by far, for the amount of beds and being able to see beds.
This is where you want your swimbait. Right over top of a good bed. However, beds are hard to come by. Like really hard to come by, and the stuff is so thick around them, no swimbaits, not even the weedless kind can swim. The few bed fish areas are getting a ton of pressure too. Of course there are some off the radar bedding areas, but none I found, and believe me, I’ve looked.
It can be an eerie feeling, not having much going on to get excited about, going into a tournament. I can catch some fish, but man, I’m just not on ’em and the bigbait thing has been really tough. Okeechobee is in a tough cycle at the moment. Not to say some guys won’t be catching 30+ pounds, because they will, but I will need some super good fortune to get a 18-20 pound sack. I just haven’t got ’em figured out, and I’ve tried to become a puncher/flipper this year, spent days doing it, only to find myself disgusted with the results. The good news is I can fish freely and just go fishing, and usually that is when I fish best and good things happen.
The water is so black you can hardly ever see the bottom right now. The water can be red too right now, mixed up between black and brown. The fish are in both the black and red water, and guys will get ’em on the outside grass line, and inside grass lines.
At 5 and 1/4″ long and 1.2 ounces, the 3:16 Lure Company Minnow is a fat and bulky little swimbait. The 3:16 Minnow is probably not going to catch you double digit and giant bass, but it does fit into the tournament, weedless, and numbers of kicker fish department. Like all of Mickey Ellis softbaits, the 3:16 Minnow is incredibly buoyant, which means it stalls really well, and fishes slowly extremely well, but also can scoot along, throwing a v-wake behind it. This is a grass swimbait, this is a tournament swimbait, and this is also an open water swimbait.
The 3:16 Lure Company Minnow rigged on a 6/0 Owner Beast Hook
Rigging:
I rig the 3:16 Minnow on a 6/0 Owner Beast Hook. The twistlock centering pin fits the bait really well, and is great for rigging up the 3:16 Minnow. I like to texpose the hook in grass, and just leave the hook point exposed in open water. The weight of the bait combined with the weight of the 6/0 Owner Beast Hook makes this a legit swimbait, that will require a rod that can throw a medium sized swimbait. Altogether, the bait when rigged is approaching 1.5 ounces. I like to fish the bait on 50# straight braid in grass, or 17-20# florocarbon in open water. You may also consider rigging the bait on the Weighted Owner Beast Hook with Twistlock. Same hook with some lead on the shank to get the bait down and fish it deeper or more in contact with the wood or whatever structure you’re fishing. The Weighted Beast Hook will also cause the bait to fall more horizontally.
Like just about all of Mickey Ellis softbaits, the Minnow floats when unrigged in the water. There is an internal air bladder that adds to the buoyancy, and buoyancy = Rate of Stall factor
Application:
The 3:16 Minnow is a more real, more bulky, more technical (because of the buoyancy properties) style of swimbait than the Skinny Dipper or Swim Senko style of grass swimbait. Because it rigs so well weedlessly, the bait can be fished in and thru the thickest grass, and stalled in the holes quite nicely. You can slow grind the bait in open water, and just reel it back, where you are hunting fish that are eating baitfish like shad or blue back herring. It’s got the bulk and mass to attract bigger bites, but isn’t a bigbait per se.
You get 4 perfectly packaged Minnows for $10.49. These baits can be re-used and fish very well and are part of my growing soft bait approach to grass lakes, blue back herring lakes, and tournament swimbait fishing mindset.
