Vance McCullough

The MLFBig5 Toyota Series Southern Division begins its 2021 season in Kissimmee, Florida, home to more roller coasters than any other region on Earth. This week you can add another wild ride to the list – the weather.

Always a major factor in Florida tournaments, a passing cold front chilled the area just as anglers began official practice. Temperatures, which dipped into the 30’s on a sunny Tuesday morning, will steadily climb to a high pushing 80 degrees during Saturday’s final competition round. Increasing cloudiness and southern winds throughout the week, expected to blow in excess of 15 mph Friday, could dampen the sight bite during later competition rounds as popular south-facing spawning banks normally protected from typical north winds, could get muddied from the southern blow.

Adjustments will be required of the more than 200 boaters and as many co-anglers. “We have real good numbers this year,” said MLF’s Joe Opager, via phone, enjoying a 10-degree day in Minnesota. “Everybody loves Kissimmee, loves Lake Toho.” The number of anglers is definitely up over last year’s Toyota Series opener and the weights should be as well.

The warmup should push a wave of bass to the banks where they will join fish that have been up there since the full moon in late January. This makes a moving target of the fish population in the Kissimmee Chain. Anglers who find wads of prespawn females choking a Redeye Shad in offshore hydrilla midweek may find the cupboards bare on game day. Even veteran Florida pros are often amazed, or disappointed, at how fast the offshore bite can dry up when bass here decide to charge the shallows.

The flipping bite under thick mats can also evaporate quickly as big females fan out to join bucks on the beds in more open water when temps warm rapidly this time of year.

So, sight fishing should play well, right? Yes. And no. Wednesday offers the best chance during practice to locate beds. Thursday, the first competition day, will be good too for those who catch an early limit and then go looking for promising spots to return to during the cloudier 2^nd round on Friday. By Saturday, most of the bedding fish will be hard to see even if they haven’t been caught already.

Enter the ‘winding’ bite – lures that can be used to cover water and draw fish that under warm, cloudy, breezy skies such as those forecast for Saturday, should be willing to chase anything that will fit in their mouths. A Chatterbait will be deadly in areas that allow it, but offerings of a more weedless nature will prove more efficient in many places. I’m looking at you, weightless Big EZ, Skinny Dipper and Xzone Swammer 5.5-inch, and . . . is it too early in the year to throw a toad?

While the winner may have to shift gears from sight fishing to winding, there is one approach that could carry an angler to the winner’s circle without much adjustment throughout the week – blind casting to bedded bass. JT Kinney won a big derby on Kissimmee a couple of years back, locating several dozen beds in huge, nondescript pad fields by practicing without a hook and marking the spot on his GPS every time his lure got picked up. During competition he returned and pitched a Texas-rigged Gambler Fat Ace, black and blue, to the same spots where he knew many of the bass would still be spawning, unseen, on the pad roots. It’s a slow approach that would be a total waste of time if an angler didn’t already know that fish might be present in the very specific spot he had just pitched to. It works because, in February, bass will take a week or more to complete the spawning rituals that might only keep them predictably positioned overnight in the warmer waters of May.

Of course, there is a handful of talented sticks who keep things even simpler and take their chances, rain or shine, by punching a small craw or beaver through surface mats behind a wrecking ball of tungsten – likely the most consistent way to find big bass any given day on the Kissimmee Chain. These hardheaded flippers are always a threat to win but have picked the pockets of many visiting pros even when coming up short of hoisting the big trophy. Mat punching is a bare knuckles brawl on a long rod and short line as thrilling as any ride at a nearby theme park.

This Toyota Series event promises to thrill anglers and onlookers. It will likely be won shallow regardless of the mix of techniques involved. Keep in mind that successful bass fishing in Florida usually boils down to finding the right location, not a pattern, and there is a handful of tactics to pick from once an angler finds the fish.

Finding quality fish, abundant though they may be, can be tricky on the sprawling chain that hides its bounty over several lakes and their disjointed 70,000 acres that feel much larger than that. A long run down the shotgun straight, chunk rock lined Kissimmee River south of the lock on 18,900-acre Lake Toho takes anglers to Cypress Lake’s 4,900 acres where the Hatchineha Canal will lead them to a corner of ‘Lake Hatch’, most of its 6,600 acres lying to the northwest. A little further south, over an hour now from the launch in the town of Kissimmee, they’ll enter Lake Kissimmee. If the 35,000-acre Kissimmee doesn’t offer enough options, relatively small Tiger Lake awaits via the scenic confines of Tiger Creek featuring hairpin turns to rival those on Mister Toad’s Wild Ride. For the truly adventuresome, there’s Lake Rosalie, a sort of ‘end of the rainbow’ that may or may not hold a pot of bass fishing gold. Tourney action around here usually centers on Toho and Kissimmee, perhaps because they comprise the vast majority of water in the chain, if for no other reason.

Keep your eye on this roller coaster of a bass tournament as the Southern Division of the Toyota Series kicks off this week in Central Florida, a most amusing place.