Bass fishing has been like riding a roller coaster this last week, before the rains, one day you beat your rod across the grass and the next you kick butt. The weather and river level has been has been as changeable as the fish bite. Then, we received 3.7 inches of rain yesterday and where there once were Lilly pads, is now just open water with pad structure underneath. We started the week working the scenic Myakka river and then into the various tributaries and swamp inlets, which became accessible after the down pours. Tilapia are on their beds and will furiously attack anything that crosses them, making for some great snag hook ups on light to medium tackle. The fight quite good and size wise is great too! The bass to are fending their beds along the banks as the females can be found along side the tilapia beds, feeding on their eggs. This suggests, at least along the mid-Myakka and up into the North Port canals, their spawn is winding down. Most of our bass were caught on jerk baits but after cleaning a couple of the smaller ones for a baked bass dinner, we found their stomachs filled with crayfish; guess what I'll be using this week out of my tackle box?
Our most productive lures were Junebug Spinners with #1 long shank eagle-claw hooks, X-Rap® Shad Shallow SureSet® , 4” Zoom lizards in green with blue specks and frogs. I was using medium-action Carrot stik Rod, Pflueger reel and Suffix, eight-pound test Deep Crankin’ mono-filament. Ed was going light with a short Ugly Stik attached light Pflueger reel with Cajan 6 pound test.
Up around the I75 bridge, before the rain, holds nice bass staging as they were moving into a pre-spawn habitat, in nesting. Heavy rains I am almost sure put an end to that as the river is up quite a bit.
Warming water and strong winds with high barometer made for a tough week although some impressive bass have been caught by anglers pulling X-Rap's® over new grass growth or by casting floating frogs to wood cover. The deep-drop banks and the bends along the canals or openings to new canals at North Port/Murdock are hold staging bass and all outlets from draining pipes are worth some time. 
