Thread: I could smell the beds but no bream!

That's a good one

I have side scan but it does not seem to work where I fish due to the hydrilla, pads and other grasses. So I fish old school by smelling and looking for grass or pad movement when the big brim run off the small fish. I went brim fishing Sunday morning in North Central Florida. I slowly drove around a few pad beds hoping to smell some fish on beds, I caught a slight smell of fish but could not get on the smell again..so I shut off motor and coasted to a stop into a pad bed.. I saw a few pads bumping all around me and knew I got lucky and had beds under my boat. I got out two 10 ft fiberglass cane poles, one with 6lb line the other with 8 lb flurocarbon line, 7 ft of line on each pole, #6 hook no weight or float. fished one pole since pads were pretty thick. Bite was on and off for a couple of hours, I caught at least 60 fish, culled some and had to keep 7 gut hooked mid sized brim, I ended up with 39 brim, 3 specks and 1 cat fish. . I was catching some good Copper nose brim along with small bass, small warmouth, small crappie/specks and some big line breaking - hook straightening fish..I did land a nice speckled cat fish so that was likely what was causing a lot of the issues with the hooks.. I only moved 20- 30 ft max since I was catching enough to keep me interested.. most of my keepers were over 9 inches and up to 10 inches long. Heard a few Bull Gators doing their breeding calls but not as many as 3 weeks ago.. it was a nice morning to be on the lake