Harris Chain Of Lakes How To Fish Ditches "Lake Griffin."
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- In This video I talk about productive ditches in lake griffin on the harris chain of lakes in central florida.
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You do an excellent job providing info for bass fishing! I fish for pan fish. I moved from MN to lake Griffin a few years ago and am just interested fishing this lake. I am old and fish out of a pontoon. Do you have any info for this old fart.
Thanks, and keep a tight line.
Thank you I try to breakdown and explain things where everyone can understand.
When it comes to achoring and fishing from a pontoon that's a lot different than using a trolling motor. I seen quite a few boats on Griffin with pontoons out on the edges of the ditches. Not sure if they was fishing for panfish, pickerel or crappie or something else. That would be a good start though.
Thanks for the great info!
Your Welcome! Thank for watching 👍
Are you a regular fisherman of harris chain??
I am not. I fished in Florida though a lot though. Conway Chain, Kissimmee Chain mainly with other local area smaller lakes.
Doing the ditches on the Harris Chain because there is very little content on the ditches or drains on the Harris Chain or any Central Florida lakes.
I caught my PB last year on Lake Griffin. Your explanation on ditches will be helpful. March and April on Harris Chain would ditches still be place to look for bass? Or?
The ditches are best in the winter. After the fall transition and pre spawn. There should be fish on them year around though.
For March and April the spawn is mostly over in Florida. The deeper grass in the ditches can be good after the spawn as well. Big worms work well that time of year.
Also picture these ditches like an interstate or freeway. In Florida in the natural lakes, they don't relate as much to the ditches like in the highland man made lakes. They do still relate to them in this manner though.
So picture the ditches as a freeway. Then look for flats, lilly pads, Kissimmee grass, coves and canals closer to these ditches. Picture all those as things like grocery stores. As water temps warm up after late fall and winter. Then more bait fish, crawfish and other things that bass move shallower up into those areas.
Around 17 years ago in Florida on the Conway chain, we fished primarily ditches with submerged hydrilla and eelgrass. We fished Wednesday night jackpots on the Conway chain and did very well for two young men not from the area. My buddy was from north Carolina and myself Kansas. In the year we fished Conway we fished around 40 of the jackpots. Winning roughly 20 of them and finishing in the money in over 80% of them.
We fished other areas to depending on the time of year. But primarily the ditches there was always bass.
Back then we didn't have the gps or maps showing contours. We called it fished drops, where the water would drop depth would 5ft then drop quickly into 10-15ft "for example."
Now after getting older and learning more and being able to study contour maps from my phone. I've realized looking back these were ditches we were fishing.
I hadn't fished anywhere in Florida since 2008 before I came down in December for the 2023 Bassmaster Team Championship. I first compared water clarity of the Harris Chain and Conway chain by using Google Earth. I then went and looked at those areas with contours on navionics Web app. I wasn't sure how well a pattern like ditches would work out because there was very little information about ditches or also called drains from some people. So I did lot of studying on the navionics mostly on Harris because it was one of the deeper lakes on the Harris Chain. I choose to look at deeper water because of it being early December and the water temps can reach the low 50s. The deeper water doesn't cool off as fast and cold fronts don't effect that deeper water as much.
We had 1 extra day before the official practice started and the Harris Chain was off limits until practice on Saturday. So we fished lake Yale which is somewhat considered the Harris Chain but you can't get there by water so it wasn't off limits. Yale had similar contours. We only had about 4 hrs to fish Yale so I pick out a ditch and some flats around that ditch. The first spot we fished had a good ditch that ran close to the shoreline Kissimmee grass. We only caught one little bass there but I seen a lot in that submerged hydrilla in that ditch. I had a lot react to a jerkbait but wouldn't bite it. We then fished a flater bank down from the ditch and caught 5-6 decent bass biggest just over 3lbs, using a 4" ribbon tail worm in June bug its called a big hammer ringer worm. It works great for finding bass then when you find them you can upside to a 7" or 10" ribbon tail. 7' zoom mag II, and 10" ribbon tail I recommend a zoom ole monster. Speed tail style worms work good as well, zoom speed worm and a mag speed worm is what I use. Oncei find them with the smaller worm I go to the bigger worms because bigger worms in most cases catch bigger bass. If the bass are not as active though the smaller worms they bite better. Some guys start with big worms then go smaller if they don't get bit. I do just the opposite.
Spinnerbaits, bladed jigs, and rattle traps are good for active bass as well. So once I find an area with bass I work it over with these baits to see how active the bass are. These baits will get bigger fish mainly the spinnerbait and bladed jig. Rattle traps or lipless cranks don't seem to get as many of the bigger bites.
We couldn't get anything on bigger worms or the reaction baits that day. It was 80 degrees and water temps started in the high 60s and ended in the mid 70s, no wind, no clouds and a cold front had just pushed through the day before. We talked with a big name local guide that said it was very slow for him as well.
So for the 1st day of practice we fished big Harris. Looking for areas similar to those contours we found on Yale. We first would go to those areas and idle around the area looking for the submerged grass using side imaging, down imaging and 2d sonar. When we found the grass we'd fish the deeper submerged grass and also the shallower shoreline Kissimmee grass, and lily pads. The first day I used a jerkbait quite a bit using FFS. Throwing the jerkbait over the submerged because the jerkbait is good at drawing the bass up out of the grass. I didn't catch any on the jerkbait but it let me know that the bass were tight into that submerged grass. My partner threw lipless cranks, bladed jigs, and Texas rig worms. We fished shallower as well close to those ditches to see if they was up shallower. The 1st day of practice we fished a lot of different things trying to figure out a pattern. I focused primarily on the ditches and deeper shell beds. With the water temps in the low to mid 70s I didn't figure they would be out in those ditches as well. I focused on the ditches though because there was a cold front forecasted for the first day of the tournament and lows in the 30s. The 2nd day we fished Dora mainly and beuclaire. I have a video on these ditches we fished on Dora and also on big Harris. In Dora we fished submerged grass in ditches closer to the shoreline Kissimmee grass. We found out they was biting the bladed jig "chatterbait" very well in the morning and with clouds. When the sun came out the 4" ribbon tail worm and speed worm worked better. So after catching around 8 keepers with the best 5 around 15lbs on Dora. We then the 3rd day went back into Harris and looked for shallower ditches. We found two good shallower ditches and a big submerged hydrilla flat right up from the ditch. We had around 18lbs but the area we found was a known community hole. We then ran back at the end of the day to the good ditch we fished on day 1. We caught 3 keepers on it and really pinpointed the area of the offshore grass that was holding the bass. .
Day 4 was just a half day practice per tournament rules. We chose to fish Griffin to see the size it had and a lot of local reports and tournaments were saying griffin was producing big bags. We didn't get to fish many areas due to a very crowded ramp on the south end of the lake so we seen another ramp online not far away. We went there but itvwasnt usable so we had to put in at the state park I think it was called. It was way back in that far west canal. We ended up fishing a few areas down in that area. We catch a limit but a small limit in some ditches in the submerged hydrilla.
We chose to stay in Harris for the tournament both days. #1 the cold front coming in and the deeper water in big Harris. #2 I only got a 25 gallon gas tank in my boat and it was only getting like 2miles per gallon of gas with idling around marking the offshore grass. Running to Dora required two long idle zones so we wasn't sure if we had enough gas to get there and back. #3 was similar to #1 was Dora being shallower I didn't know how that cold front would effect those fish.
You can see that whole tournament breakdown it's 2023 Bassmaster Team Championship on my channel.
Day 1 we was boat #38 out of #248 to take off so knowing the around long island was a local community hole we went there first to get there before the crowd. Started off with trolling motor issues but figured out we couldn't fix it and just had to deal with the horrible noise 🤦. The wind had pushed us off our main ditch there and another boat was between us and it and boats everywhere on the grass flat. We fished around and got to that ditch and the other key areas on it catching 4 or 5 keepers on bladed jigs and the bass were smashing it si yhst told us we had the right lures, 12" minimum was the limit, nothing hardly over 1lb. Next area was a ditch directly off the south bank of long Island. I don't think we caught one there that pass. We then went to that ditch and submerged hydrilla we found on practice day 1 and 3. It's just north of hickory point ramp. We caught a 6-10 there the only bass there on day 1. Then we ended up catching two more decent ones almost 2lbs on that ditch off the bank of long Island. We had just over 13lbs and was in 31st or 32nd after day 1. All on the bladed jig.
Day two they reversed boat numbers so we was closer to the boat going out. We decided to start off on that ditch north of hickory point because we only seen 1 boat there on day 1 and about 50 around long island. We caught two over 2lbs and missed one there on bladed jigs. We struggled up in the long area missing two and finally getting our 3rd keeper. We then ran back to hickory point area and caught another keeper there. The wind quit blowing and no clouds so that's when they started biting the Texas rig pegged sinker with a 4" big hammer ringer worm. We ended up catching 7 keepers. 4 on the ringer worm and 3 on the bladed jig. 5 came from that hickory point ditch. We had 10-13 I believe on day 2 and ended up moving up into 28th out of 248.
That's just an example of how quick they can change and move and also different techniques to catch them. Usually once you find them they don't move far you just got to change techniques to catch them. We caught them all the way from deeper in the ditches and some in 2ft of water up from those ditches. The ditches area good starting point anytime of the year to catch bass
@@levisnow88 I'm currently on the Harris chain now. I fished the team trail through the Canadian circuits and we struggled on Harris as it was completly different from our largemouth in the north. We placed like 198th place lol. This video has given a better understanding as I'm finally pricing everything together going into my 4th week here. I leave in a few days. But it's been great knowledge figuring out a complete different style of fishing. Regardless very informational as I'm going back to griffin tomorrow as that's where I've been catching most of my fish ( other then Yale punching mats with a 2oz)
Great to hear it helped you Brian. I'm not sure how the ditches bite is this time of year but they shouldn't be far from the edges or the grass lines. They seem to hold on that offshore hydrilla pretty much all season. I don't live in Florida and didn't grow up fishing there but I understand grass fishing very well. Our local area here in Southeast Kansas is full of milfoil which is similar to hydrilla and Florida fishing in central Florida has fit this style for me very well.
I did live a year In Florida in trade school and that helped a lot to understand it better.
Appreciate the great videos!
Thank You I appreciate you watching 👍
Great Video!
Thank You!