If an angler is looking to catch big largemouth bass, the Big O is the place

Lake Okeechobee is one of the country’s premier destinations for catching big largemouth bass, and a recent trip lived up to that reputation.

Fishing at the south end of the Big O with captain Steve Daniel and my longtime friend Glenn Sapir, we caught and released dozens of fish weighing up to 7 pounds.

An outdoors writer and editor from Putnam Valley, New York, which is about 50 miles north of New York City, Sapir wanted to catch a trophy bass while in Florida, and he came to the right place.

He thought we would need to use large wild shiners to entice bites from big bass, and the live baits do produce good fish. But Daniel had checked with several tackle stores and marinas on the lake and none of them had wild shiners.

As it turned out, we didn’t need them.

Casting a small crankbait that swam a foot or so under the surface, Sapir hooked the 7-pounder early on a cool (for us Floridians), cloudless, sunny morning and played it carefully on his lightweight spinning outfit.

Daniel waited patiently at the front of his bass boat and when the fish tired, Sapir swung the rod so Daniel could get his hands on the fishing line and gingerly pull the bass to the side of the boat. When he reached over, put his thumb in the fish’s mouth and lifted the bass into the boat, all three of us were delighted to see just how big it was.

“That was something,” Daniel said after the fish was photographed and released. “I was impressed.”

And the great thing about Lake Okeechobee is anglers can catch bass that big or bigger all year long.

“When a tournament shows up, you’ve seen bigger sacks than you’ve ever seen,” said Daniel of winning five-bass limits that routinely weigh more than 30 pounds, which is a 6-plus-pound average.

One of Daniel’s favorite bass lures is a Bomber Long A floating jerkbait. Two of his favorite colors are the brightly colored chartreuse flash and firetiger. He uses the 4½-inch size with three treble hooks and fishes it on 20-pound Berkley Trilene Big Game monofilament line instead of thinner 15-pound mono.

“The 20-pound-test line keeps it from going so deep,” Daniel said. “If you throw it on 15 and it goes just a few inches too deep, it’ll stay hung up a lot more (on submerged vegetation). It’s all about being efficient. The more you’re hung up, the less you’re going to catch fish because you spend half your time going after your bait.”

A native of Tennessee, Daniel moved to Clewiston nearly 40 years ago and has consistently guided anglers to big bass on Lake Okeechobee.

He regularly competed on the Bassmaster and FLW Tour circuits and won several major tournaments. Now, Daniel and his wife, Debbie, often interview his former tournament competitors on their radio show “Hooked Up with Steve & Deb,” which airs from 5-6 a.m. Saturdays on WOKC.com and from 5-6 a.m. Sundays on WAFCFM.com.

Daniel recalled that during a successful tournament in Texas, he had three identical lures tied on three different rods with three different line sizes so he could fish those lures at three different depths.

He said the depth difference between 20- and 15-pound line might be only a couple of inches, but it can produce many more fish. And he likes using the Long A lure because bass will bite it year-round.

Daniel likes to make a long cast, then use the rod tip to jerk the lure back to the boat. Sometimes a fish would hit the Long A as soon as it touched down on the water’s surface. Other times the hit would come a few feet from the boat.

We quickly lost count of all the bass we caught on the lures, most of which ranged from 2-3 pounds.

“The good thing about the Long A is if fish are feeding they’ll hit it and if they’re not feeding they’ll hit it,” Daniel said. “Because that crippled action that you get out of it, it makes that bait look really injured.

“If you’re throwing a crankbait sometimes, if they’re not really feeding, they’ll probably just watch it go on by. But if you throw that jerkbait out, it’s the nature of predators to go after things that are injured and nothing looks more injured than a hard jerkbait going side to side.”

And nothing’s more exciting than when you reel in a truly big Lake Okeechobee largemouth.