Farm 13 Bass Fishing

My first bass from the famous Farm 13 came on a Z-Man Pop Shadz!

I did something completely out of character for me this past Thursday. I accepted an offer to go fishing for bass from an occasional client and longtime friend Tom Haycock. Tom is a great outdoorsman who fishes, hunts and dives all over Florida and beyond. Our destination was the fabled impoundments known as the Stick Marsh and Farm 13. If I understood the area properly we traveled from the boat launch into and through the Stick Marsh and actually fished in Farm 13.

Being my first time here I was completely surprised by how many other boaters were present during the middle of the week. A quick scan of the license plates in the huge parking lot proved vacationers outnumbered local anglers by a large margin.
Another surprise was how the boats huddled-up in specific areas leaving ninety-five percent of the waters devoid of anglers. It reminded me of a busy day on 8-A Reef out of Port Canaveral or maybe the tarpon fleet in Boca Grande Pass!

Tom controlled the boat using a trolling motor doing his best to avoid the myriad tree stumps the lake is famous for. Most of the boats stayed outside of the shallow water stump field interlaced with thick beds of eelgrass. While I understood the reluctance of the anglers to enter this zone it was quickly obvious those of us who did venture into the shallows were the only anglers catching fish!

Not until afternoon did a bite develop outside of the weedline. In fact the fringe area between the obvious weedline and the very thick weedbed proved to be the hot spot from Noon until we left about two-thirty p.m.

While I managed the first fish of the day on a Z-Man Pop Shadz it was the only fish caught on top-water lures. All of Tom’s bass and the remainder of mine came on more traditional bass worms rigged Texas style with a very light weight and in a color I’m sworn to secrecy!