The old song goes, "Oh, Lord, it's hard to be humble"....... and it can be, when you fish at Yates Place. I put in 11 1/2 hours there yesterday, and caught a total of only 12 bass. I was fishing for big bass, though, and only one of them was under 16 inches - which I harvested. Daybreak found me tossing a buzz bait on flat-calm water, but I didn't catch a fish for almost an hour. Finally, a 2-05 cooperated in getting the skunk smell out of my boat, followed almost 2 hours later by the single dink. The little one hit a weightless, black/blue fleck, wacky-rigged Senko. I spent the next hour "practice casting," but then things started to happen. At 10:19, a 4-10 tried to swallow that old Mister Twister Lunker Buzz II. Then , at 10:35, I got pretty excited when a big one picked up my creature bait right under my rod tip in 8 feet of water, and - thankfully - proceeded to swim under the boat for deeper water. I had a good fight on my hands, and almost had a stroke when I finally saw the fish, thinking that I finally had my first DD. She looked like a typical Florida Bass caught in Florida, too - no pronounced belly, but a lot of length. She was just a hair over 26 inches long, and she pulled my scales down almost to that magic 10-pound mark…almost, but not quite. Still enough for another PB this year, though - She weighed an honest 9 pounds, 12 ounces. Only 12 minutes later, a 4-12 picked up that same bait - a 5" watermelon/orange fleck Havoc Pit Boss. I picked up a 3-pounder on a chartreuse shad Rat-L-Trap, and then a 2.5-pounder and one just under 4 on the Pit Boss. At 2:15, a 3-08 hit that old buzz bait, followed by a nice 5-06 at 2:52 that tried to take a black/blue jig and split-tail pork eel away from me. I finished the day exactly an hour later with a 3-12 that wanted the same color Pit Boss what had been paying off for me. Once again, I lost a big one - a big-bellied lady definitely over 10 - when she jumped and threw the small squarebill back at me. Yes, I caught only 12 bass for the day, with some long dry spells between them - but it was still an outstanding day. That made 3 trips in a row to Yates Place with multiple big fish.  The water temperature yesterday started out at 76.7 ° and had climbed to 81° by the time I cranked my pond boat onto its trailer. Visibility was 18" at best, and the lake level is down about 2.5 feet, according to DeWayne. The fish that hit the 'trap and the big one I lost were in open water away from the shoreline; all the others were caught from woody cover.

Before I left, I spent some time visiting with DeWayne, who as usual was a terrific host. I am so thankful that he and Kay make that beautiful property and lake available to PWF. It obviously is being well-managed. Thank you, Steve and Seth, for that! I'll definitely go back, and maybe I'll catch that same big girl when she's full of eggs. She seemed healthy as she swam away, and she'll be a DD next spring!

The 9-12:

Posted By: Tom Dillon