Butler Chain of Lakes Bass Fishing Report

In this week’s video my friend and fishing tournament partner Justin Darley are fishing a team tournament on the Butler Chain of Lakes in Windermere Florida. For those of you, who haven’t already heard of this Chain of Lakes, allow me to fill ya in. The Butler Chain of Lakes is a huge chain comprised of eleven lakes. The homes that surround the lake are beyond beautiful and are the homes of athletes such as Tiger Woods, Shaq, Ken Griffey Jr and a few other celebrities.

The lakes are very deep and very clear making it a paradise for anglers who are drop shot experts. For those of us who aren’t deep water fishermen like our northern bass fishing friends then the Alabama rig is the way to go in this lake. We threw this rig all day long and as a matter of fact so did everyone else we saw on the water that day. If you didn’t know what an Alabama rig was after a day on the butler chain than you had to be living under a rock.

The bass school on this lake year round and you can see birds diving down on busting shad just like your deep sea dolphin fishing. Our tactic on this particular day was to run and gun around the chain. When we saw birds diving down on bait fish we knew it was because the bass were chasing them and the birds were taking advantage of the situation. We would then run to wherever this was happening and start throwing the Alabama rig. Most times we would catch fish doing this but there were a few times we were either too late or the birds and the bait fish had moved in the little time it took us to get to them.

After running and gunning all day long and catching a fish here and there we moved into a small cove on main Lake Butler and really got into a lot of nice fish. The very first cast with the Alabama rig in this cove Justin hooked a fish that was every bit of nine pounds and a few casts later I landed a nice bass in the four pound range. With little time left Justin and I hit a few other spots on our way to the weigh in and put together a decent five fish limit of just over thirteen pounds. If we had that nine pounder that came unhooked at the boat we would have had over twenty pounds. I guess that’s why they call it fishing and not catching!