Probably should post this on the Fishing Reports Forum but .... .

My earlier quote from a Florida State board:
Quote Originally Posted by dixieangler
I will be fishing a canal early tomorrow from a canoe that has Specks in it and it has a bridge also. But we usually just go up the canal and then drift back down current (steering with oars) outside the lily pads in about 8 to 12 feet of water with our lines and floats out until we hit a school. Then we try to either anchor or else stay on that school if possible, otherwise we continue to drift back down current. The slow natural canoe drift with the jigs and minnows seem to work best for us. Later we go to just outside the bridge and anchor so we can cast to and under the bridge along the pilings without disturbing the Specks. No holes on this canal like on the lakes, just lily pads and subsurface weedbeds. The canal is just that, a flat bottom with banks. Don't know how long we will stay, depends on the biting mood of the Specks. I might try the fly rod near the bridge and along the lily pads. If the Specks don't cooperate, then maybe the bream will. I need to put some fillets in the freezer.
The water level was real low on the canal today like everywhere else I suppose. The Speck bite was on from when we started at about 7am to when the high wind came up at about 9:30am. Then the Specks stopped biting when the high wind came up no matter what we used. If the wind had not been up, we were doing real good and probably would have gotten a lot more than just the six in the short time drifting. We used jigs, live minnows (only hook), and jigs tipped with minnows all about four feet down below a float and that is how we caught most of them. The largest was 12 inches. I did manage to get two on the fly rod using a slow sinking fly line and a #8 yellow chartreuse Crappie Candy fly.

8 inch Speck on the fly


Six Specks on ice


My fishing buddy's motorized canoe