Osceola lake bass just "can't get no respect."

The silent trolling motor pushed our 14-foot bass boat up a lily pad-filled corridor to a stretch with an open line for casting alongside those enticing aquatic plants. We all got nothing, with Ely urging Dan to point us back to where the fish had been. We returned to the spot, where a small inflow seemed to be.

“Smell that?” Dan said. “That’s bedding fish.”

I took a deep sniff and noticed a slight musty odor. Soon Ely was holding aloft another nice shellcracker, silently pointing at it, apparently aware that a picture is worth a thousand sarcasms.

“You’re not gonna cry, are you, when I start beating you?” Dan lashed out with bravado. He and I got nothing and we decided to take a nearby canal to Coon Lake, smallest of the group.

The canal to Coon is wide open with imported rocks lining one shore. The other shore has some nice cover and some live oaks reaching out over one part with three rope swings dangling down. I figured we’d take advantage on the return trip in the heat.

Dan noticed action against the rocks and sure enough, avoided the skunk with a bass only a little shorter than his worm and displayed it proudly.

“I see where you got your name,” Ely offered. “That looks like a sardine.”

“Alright. It’s over for you now. You know what I’m saying? This is the beginning of the end.”

“Oooh, I’m so scared,” the boy feigned terror.

Further success in the canal escaped Sardinia, and I failed to raise anything on my omnivorous jig. Where it opened into Coon Lake, beautiful flats spread out on each side of the canal, perfect blends of cattail, grass and lily pads, the kind of area where you’re ready at every instant to get a strike. I exited the boat with fly rod, leaving Dan with his tormentor. The bottom was firm and my toes felt their way easily through the weeds. Continuing the pattern of revealing themselves to us but refusing to play, fish were splashing all over the place, just perfect for me and my Swann Mylar minnow, I thought.

My partners worked cattails on the fringes and Dan yelled with the exuberance of someone about to shut up a 9-year-old boy. I saw a 2-pound bass rocket into the air and throw his worm and hook. Though I couldn’t hear, I’m sure my boy, having been raised properly, said something very sympathetic to him, like, “Gee, that’s too bad.”

Regular feeding by some debris at the back of the flat got my attention and on the way there, I constantly put the normally irresistible minnow on splash rings by weed patches, with no hits. At the debris it got smashed and I pulled even with Dan, at one bass each.

I reboarded and Dan moved us to the middle of the lake, where he marked loads of fish in six feet of water. Ely and I dropped jigs while Dan continued with worm, all to no avail. Sardinia suspeckted they were specks and I suggested perhaps they were horseye suckers, in which case they’d never bite, exposing a built-in flaw in the fish-finder method, causing people to waste time on uncatchable fish. After a cooling swim, it was time to move on.

In our quest to try out a lot of these lakes, we headed for the canal to Lizzie. This canal features great casting targets—lotta weeds and docks. Dan got a good hit on a worm, which immediately wrapped him around a piling and parted the line. I had a couple quick hits-and-misses on a tiny tube jig and Ely boated a big redbreast on a new nightcrawler.

“It’s your fault for bringing the worms,” I pointed out to Dan. In Lizzie we parked by some grassbeds and the man named after the mighty sardine made one last cast with his giant worm.

“Okay,” he conceded, as it came back in unmolested and desperation took over, “I’m giving up on the lunker. Now I’ve just got to catch something, anything.”