Florida Live Bait Prespawn Bass Fishing

Bass fishing in central Florida is synonymous with big largemouth bass. There are so many fantastic lakes to explore in this part of the state. One of the finest bass fishing lakes is Lake Tohopekaliga. Lake Toho, as it is known, is a big bass fishing lake. There are some beasts swimming in these waters. This region of Florida is best of the best in the world. You have anglers from all over the world traveling to this lake system for a chance at a hog.

Capt. Nick Kefalides is a combat wounded veteran of the United States Marine Corps Special Operations Command and a lifelong fisherman. He has a studied quality about his fishing program. You can see the military discipline in how he runs his program. Everything is where it should be. Clean and tiddy. You can quickly tell that he is well versed in the art of Florida bass fishing. If you have watched any of Nick's other In The Spread bass fishing videos, you know how hard he works to find fish and catch fish. His unique ability to articulate every detail of what he is doing and why makes him an outstanding teacher. We a privileged to include him as an instructor.

For this video, Nick Kefalides is going to be bass fishing with live bait in early April. As Nick says, “live bait gives you the absolute best opportunity to nail a trophy fish”. This is prespawn fishing. Spring bass fishing during this period puts you on the door step of landing a huge fish. The females are loaded down with roe. This just adds heft to already stout fish. Lake Toho's healthy population of quality fish provides a great venue to teach live bait tactics. Nick is going to share bass fishing tips on how to hook live bait, casting baits to weed edges, trolling and drifting on weed edges and open water weed beds, along with fishing structure and ledges.

The best spring bass baits for this lake are wild shiners. This is a staple forage food for bass and one of the heartier baits you can use. Learn how to setup live bait bass fishing rigs. See what type of hook and float works best for the applications featured. See how to hook live bait and how deep to fish it. Understand why you want your bait at a certain depth. Presenting live bait seems easy. Put a bait out and wait for the detonation, right? Yeah, no. There really are methods that will prove far more productive when properly utilized. Where should you start? How do you find good spots? How long should you fish an area? How do you fish open water weed beds? It is like anything else. If you want to excel, you have to put in the work. The more you know, the more time you spend on the water, the more likely you are to catch big fish on a regular basis. The valuable lessons in this video will help accelerate your learning curve.

Capt. Nick Kefalides starts out by casting baits to hydrilla edges and working them into open pockets where the bait can swim freely without getting tangled in grass. The idea is to put the shiner in house, so it can get destroyed. He will explain float movements that indicate the bait is doing work. You will see the difference between a gar bite and a largemouth bite. He will progress into power drifting or trolling these weed edges to scout out other fish holding areas. This will allow you to cover a larger area in a more thorough way. I know trolling is commonly associated with saltwater offshore fishing, but it is something that will absolutely work for bass. Nick will demonstrate how to troll live shiners along weed edges.

Lake Toho is part of the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes and as such has a lock system to control flow. When water is released, bait gets sucked into the lock discharge area. This in turn attracts predators, due to bait concentration. Essentially, what you have is a deeper channel that the water flows through, at the choke point of the lock. Naturally, you also have a ledge where to bottom drops off into the channel. This all makes for excellent fishing structure. Nick will demonstrate how to fish for bass in and around this structure.

The third leg of this how to fish for bass using live shiners involves drifting baits over open water grass flats, where some fish make their spawning beds. This is a process of searching for fish. The bass are cruising around the flat looking for bait. You just want your bait to intersect their path. Prospecting this way will allow you to find fish in a wide open area quicker and then allow you to pin down for further exploration of the area.

During this prespawn period the bass will be a little more agro. They don't want anything near their house. Put a live one in the vicinity and boom. With this In The Spread bass fishing video, you are privy to one of the best fishing minds in the Florida bass fishing game. Nick Kefalides seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of bass fishing in Florida. He just knows what are the fish doing during any given conditional scenario, what bass bait to present and how to get maximum performance out of it. Remember, it is not just about tossing a live bait out and setting the hook. If your bait is not in the right place, it is not in the game. Swim free. We want to help you get more bites and more hookups by providing extra skills and understanding for your largemouth bass fishing program.

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