SEPTEMBER 2022
It was a flipflopped month on Kit Lake, my home water, in central Florida’s largemouth bass country.
For a while, the document machine was upside down. (At least it was for the way I inserted the documents.) But colleagues helped us get things right side up. Off the water, fishing kept us straight, as the weather and the fish flipped, too.
Clouds and consistent rain stopped the unpleasantness of being on the lake. We flipped from waiting for fluffy mid-summer clouds to provide shade and turn on the fish, to waiting for an opening in the low grey storm clouds. Late summer rains continued well into the month. The water rose and stayed soupy warm. Fish were in the newly soaked beds of cattails. We caught small bass and stout bluegill on moderately sinking baitfish flies.
Then as winds ahead of thunderstorms blew the fluff of those cattails, the fish flipped their holding location to offshore water four to six feet deep. We caught yearlings and larger bass here on heavier sinking flies like Super Buggers.
Towards the end of the month, the weather flip flopped. Our first full days of sun allowed for day long outings and safe evening hatch trips. Blind mosquitoes tickled our legs as we walked through the grass and sure enough crappie began to bite in about 8 feet of water on zebra midges.
Before we put away the big outfits with sinking lines, we went offshore one more time, where some lazy bass loitered.
Foam spiders are peeking out from the backs of our fly boxes, next month might be their time.
