KISSIMMEE, FL — The sun was starting to break through some morning clouds and shower us with the first light of the morning as guide Randy Yager piloted his boat through a thick mat of vegetation. Read this guide to learn more about the various types of lake vegetation.
“This is pretty much what the whole lake looks like,” said Yager of Lake Tohopekaliga, better known as Lake Toho. Yager is a native of upstate New York now transplanted for at least half the year to Florida. “I started out in boat sales and fished on the side. I soon realized that wasn’t my cup of tea.”
Yager now guides full time. During the winter months he’s on the lakes of central Florida then returns to his home water of Thousand Islands in New York for the summer months to show anglers where to find smallmouth in the massive expanse of water near the Canadian border.
“We do a whole lot more half-day trips now than they did in the old days,” said Yager. “People are really busy doing other activities here. This area has expanded so much and there’s so much more for people to do other than Disney.”
Soon after we reached the other side of the vast bed of weeds, he killed the motor and picked up a rod. He reached into the bait well and fished out a wild shiner about 10 inches long, hooked it up and handed me the rod.
I wondered if Randy realized I had some fishing experience. I had a background which surely would have entitled me to a little more respect than live bait on a bobber and waiting for a bite. However, I soon learned I knew far less than I thought about shiner fishing for big bass. Those who are planning to start to go on regular fishing trips may consider visiting a new boat sales center and invest in your own boat.
“There’s an art to shiner fishing. It’s not just throwing a float out, laying the rod down, and drinking your favorite beverage while you wait for a bite,” he explained. “The wild shiners swim a lot with the float and you have to keep them right along the edge of the grass line. Sometimes they’ll swim out away from it–and sometimes they’ll swim into it, but you have to try to hold him right in that danger zone just off the vegetation and keep him really nervous.”
A nervous shiner is a perfect fishing lure. Nervous shiners are always on the edge of panic and predators can sense the fear. Such behavior warrants a strike. The bobber moved along and as it would swing into the grass, I would gently tug it back out into the open. When he headed to open water, you had to reel in and put him back near the grass edge with a well placed cast.
The trick, Yager explained, was patience.
“It’s not just going to sit there like a minnow, they’re very active,” he said. “It’s nerve racking for a lot of my customers because they have to wait for the bass to finally get the shiner in their mouth. They want to set the hook right away, but you have to wait for the fish to eat it.”
He was right, the action was nerve racking. I learned after a couple of missed hooksets early what he was talking about. We’re taught from birth to set the hook when the bobber disappears , but that doesn’t work with a shiner. Eventually I got the hang of it and waited until I could feel the fish resisting–or see the line move–to know the fish was ready for a hookset.
My first three fish weren’t anything to brag about. They would have been about the same size we would catch back in West Virginia in the 12 to 14 inch range.
“We have 12 inchers too,” laughed Yager. “Those big 10 pounders start out as 12 inchers and they’ve go to eat too.”
Another distraction is gar, which are bait killers. Gar with their long, toothy snout will attack a shiner, slice him open, and leave him Their bill makes a hookset or even catching one a stroke of extreme luck. Eventually though after watching my panicked shiner break the water and drag the bobber along the grass line, I felt pressure on the line and set the hook. The massive fish blasted through the surface and broke water almost immediately.
“Take it easy. Don’t horse him,” were Yager’s instructions as he prepared the net. “This is what you came to Toho to fish for.’
The beauty tipped the scales at just under seven pounds. Storm clouds were starting to gather on the horizon and thunder was threatening to end the day faster than the gar. But just as the Heaven’s opened, another heavy bass at just over seven pounds rocked the shiner and was soon hanging from my fingers for a picture.
“I like to call it a marsh and not a lake,” said Yager. “It’s about 11 miles long, average depth about six feet, you can’t see the bottom in most places. It’s a dark water, bowl shaped march. There’s vegetation everywhere. There’s not a rock in this lake and not much woody structure. It’s nothing but marsh grasses of all different varieties and you learn to read those grasses. That’s how you read the lake.”
Lake Toho is the northernmost in a series of a four lake chain. On the north end of Toho is the city of Kissimmee, Florida and ironically the southern most lake in the chain is Lake Kissimmee from which water flows down the Kissimmee River and eventually dumps into famed Lake Okeechobee. The separation of Lake Kissimmee and the town of Kissimmee often causes confusion.
Although most of the tourism literature suggests the best fishing is during the winter, Yager doesn’t necessarily agree and suggested winter chills can make for a tough bite anywhere, particularly with the finicky Florida Strain largemouth.
“It’s hard to get a bite in cold weather. We do really well in the spring and occasionally we will catch a big one during the summer months,” Yeager said. “Sometimes the sun will make them bite better.”
To learn more about fishing Lake Toho or to book a trip with Randy or another local guide, you can start at the Big Toho Marina.