Lake Santa Fe

Bluegill and redear can be found around docks and cypress trees scattered around the lake. Target those fish using crickets, earthworms, and grass shrimp. By this time, Black Crappie should be finished spawning. If you are looking for crappie offshore, troll or drift crappie jigs or minnows and try to cover as much water as possible. Pay attention to water depth, lure depth, lure color and boat speed if you start to catch fish. Use this information to try to pattern these fish on a given day. Experiment with different combinations of speed, lure color, and lure depth to find what the fish want. Santa Fe crappie anglers should try probing the deepest areas of the lake as well (20-30 foot depths). A good place to begin your deep-water fishing is on any one of the marked FWC fish attractors on the lake. Anglers should look for largemouth bass in near-shore maidencane beds, under docks, and around cypress trees as some fish wrap up their spawning. Soft plastics either flipped, pitched, or dragged near structure should draw strikes. Don’t be afraid to look away from the shoreline when targeting bass also. Anglers should try slow-trolling live golden shiners parallel to the outer grass edges. As with Lake Sampson, keep an eye open for roving schools of feeding sunshine bass offshore. Although they haven’t been stocked in recent years, there are still a few of the hybrids in the lake. Look for birds diving or surface commotion to find these feeding fish. Approach these feeding schools with stealth, and you should be able to catch multiple fish before the action stops. Effective lures include anything shiny, white, or minnow-shaped. Be prepared for either schooling largemouth bass or sunshine bass, as they can both display the same feeding behavior offshore.

While the bulk of the bass spawning season may be behind us, opportunities for big fish still exist. Register online with FWC’s TrophyCatch program and enter your trophy bass for a chance to win prizes. Entering fish is as simple as submitting a photo of the fish on a scale to the website above. The photo must show the entire fish and clearly show the weight on the scale.