My brother in law's (Jace) bday is next week, so this was an early bday trip. He wanted to go bass fishing, so we met at the N/NW side of lake okeechobee. The reports have been pretty good lately from what he said, so we wanted to test our luck.

Arrived at the ramp at 6:15. Castnet in hand, tried to find some shiners or small bluegill around the ramp like I find finger mullet at sandsprit for offshore, but no luck. Only a small bass and two tiny bluegill. No big deal, we're more artificial guys anyway. Castnet goes in the truck and we're off.

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We soon found out there was a tournament today as we left the ramp, 20+ bass boats come zipping by us on all sides. We attempt to keep up and show 'em who's boss... floor (pedal to the metal style) the tiller throttle, but as we already knew, 17mph ain't gonna cut it... sitting up in the bow I shamelessly turn on my iPhone, slide to video camera, turn the flash on, and hold the flash up over my head so we don't get ran over!! It was a bumpy ride for the next few minutes (17ft aluminum jon boat vs 2ft confused water).

2nd cast and a small bass welcomes us. Quickly fillet and release... jk. Most of the morning, we were throwing top water baits (frogs, spinner baits, rapala xrap, surface swim baits,etc). Action wasn't what we thought it'd be. Quite a few misses with just a couple decent (2 pounders) fish.

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Switch to texas rig and work the grass edges. The bass would not pass up a Yamato (black/blue flake) senko or a jig with a bush hog. We each get one 3 pounder each and lots of small ones. It was getting late by now so we called it quits at 3. Ended up landing 20 bass, not too bad, but it sure was hot (no ttop and no cloud cover, at all).

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The bite on bottom was better than on top if anyone is going to lake O. Temp reading got up to almost 95 degrees, but not sure how accurate that is (aluminum boat + shallow transom + transom mounted transducer = inaccurate temp reading?). Saw lots of gators (not trout), weeds (not sargassum) and flyers (big mullet)

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Some cool things I saw today: crow picked up my frog, set the hook on two fish that came flying out of the water on the set (small bass, about 6" and anorexic), and a mullet that did a triple axle and almost landed in the boat.