Steve and Brock Wells spoon-feed sunshines - here's the result.

Northwest Florida anglers tend to overlook one of the year’s best times for catching sunshine bass. It occurs in late sum-mer and early fall when water temperatures are more in line with what they were in the springtime when the fish gang up on schooling shad.

Without really anticipating any action from sunshines I motored out to a favorite spring hole near Lake Seminole’s Booster Club landing one fall afternoon. I rigged two rods with deep squidding spoons and a third with a surface shad plug. Sunshines had not been reported in the area—in fact I had been told earlier that it was too late for them. I had just anchored up and was preparing to drop a spoon in the spring when the water off my port side suddenly exploded with panicking shad. I shot the squidding spoon out. A heavy fish grabbed it. I shoved the rod into a rod holder and grabbed the surface plug and fired it into the quieting waters. Another fish grabbed it. Somehow, I managed to land both fish. Each one was a 7-pound sunshine. I went to the same spot at the same time for the next three afternoons after that. It never happened again. It was apparently a case of being at the right spot at the right time and having it pay off.

Fishing guide Steven Wells, who guides on weekends out of Jack Wingate’s Lunker Lodge on Lake Seminole just north of Chattahoochee, told me of a similar event. Again it was early fall and he had taken a father and son up the Chattahoochee River side of the reservoir to a spot he knew. A mile or two upriver a point of land runs out into the river. They got there a little after sunrise and anchored within casting range of the rocks Steve knew were scattered out into the water there.

It wasn’t long before they were into fish. Casting spoons into the rocky area brought one strike after another. Steve said, “They hit so fast that I couldn’t keep up with them. I’d be trying to get the father’s fish out of the net and the son would be holding another at boatside waiting for me to get to him. They were 5- to 7-pound hybrids and they kept right on hitting like that until 11 o’clock. That’s pretty rare for those fish but sometimes it happens when they’re schooling.”

The operative word here is “schooling.” The reason the fish are schooling is the presence of shad. Large bunches of them. If the shad aren’t there, neither are the bass. Wells has some theories about these matters that I’ll explain later but when he phoned me in late August last year all I heard him say was “...schooling at the Booster Club. Pick you up there at 4 o’clock,” and I was rattling up my fishing rods ready to go.

I beat him there. But I wasn’t alone. Two of his guide buddies—Tim Neeley and Westley Pellham—were ahead of us. Squinting into the sun’s glare, I could pick out Pellham in his boat west of the Booster Club landing already standing up and doing his thing with a well-arced fishing rod.

Patiently waiting for me at the dock was Tim Neeley in his boat, the big outboard idling. As I stepped aboard with a pair of rods and a tackle box, barely two casts from the dock, the water suddenly exploded.

“Whoa! They’re feeding right in here at the dock!”

Neeley didn’t look too surprised. “Probably whites,” he said. “It’s a good sign.”

We eased out a way while I rigged up. Meanwhile, Wells and his Party Barge arrived. He launched then came out to meet us. With him was his 11-year-old son, Brock. Thinking there might be more room for photo action aboard the Barge, I jumped aboard Steve’s boat. Brock, who intended to waste no time, was casting toward the area churned up by the feeding fish. On about his second cast he fought one in. Pellham was right. It was a white bass.

Whites, however, were not what we were after. Steve was anxious for us to get into the hybrid action. Neeley and Pellham’s boats were already over the spot where they expected it to happen.

Nothing about the lake looked any different to me but the fishfinders were picking up something important below the surface. It was a large rise in the bottom, clear of any obstacles, including weed. Or so it seemed. As I was getting ready to cast a favorite spoon, Steve fished around in his tackle box and handed me another.

“No need to try anything else,” he said. “About the only thing they’ll strike is that one there.” It was a 31⁄2-inch Krocodile spoon, but there was a difference from most I had seen. This one was a bit beat up but it had a bright blue line running down half of its back. That line looked homemade.

“The blue line have anything to do with it?” I asked Steve.

He nodded. “Fish think so.”

“You draw the line?”

“Yeah...well, I did on that one. I lost all the regular ones with factory-made blue on them. So I bought what they had of the silver spoons and added the line.”

“Interesting,” I said. “What worked?”

“One of those Marks-A-Lot permanent markers. Brock had one. Lays on a color just as good as the original.”

I tied on the spoon. “From the battle scratches the fish must not care how good your artwork is. They like it okay.”

“Whatever works,” grinned Wells.