Kayak Fishing East Lake Toho

Happy Monday Spacefish!

I hope all is well, is it just me, or is fall in the air? The air is getting crisper, the sun is setting earlier, it’s cooling off just a bit. I apologize for not being as consistent with my fishing reports, but football season is in full swing, and that has really gobbled up a lot of my time, but our regular season is already halfway through and it is really flying by! With that being said, today we’re going to talk about that other lake in Kissimmee, East Lake Toho. So let’s dive in!

Where I launched

There are a couple of different places you can launch from if you are interested in kayaking East Lake Toho, and over time I will certainly go back and explore other parts of the lake. But for this trip I launched from Lakefront Park located at 1104 Lakeshore Blvd, St Cloud, FL 34769. I unloaded in the parking lot, and dragged my kayak down the lakefront beach and was off to the races. I stayed on the south side of the lake during the entire trip, working my way westward for about 4 hours of continuous fishing, and by the time I got done it took me about an hour to paddle back in and get loaded up. Word of caution about choosing this spot, this park gets slammed as the day goes on. With the lakefront beach, and splash pad, it was a madhouse getting off the beach and loading up during the middle of a weekend afternoon.

Topwater

I started the day fishing topwater, and it was productive in terms of bites. I followed some sunrise baitfish activity in the open parts of the lake, fishing a Rapala Skitter Walk (SW-07) in Holographic Silver and caught 3 small Bass on this bait, I switched over to a black hollow body frog as I approached the vegetation that lines the perimeter soup bowl shape of the lake. I caught another small Bass on the frog, and lost 2 more that came up and hit the frog. They were probably small too, I can’t complain about catching fish, and lack of action on this trip but everything that I got to bite was on the “small” scale. East Lake Toho has a lot of emergent vegetation lining the lake, just west of the public fishing pier, I was able to fish the frog on a field of scattered floating vegetation. I went back through before getting off the water and took a picture of the field. I just slowly worked the frog through the field and all 3 of the Frog blowups were Bass coming up and ambushing it from under the floating grass. I fished both baits on a 7 foot medium heavy bait caster set up with 50 pound braid. With the walking plug I used a 20 pound mono leader, and with the frog I cut the leader off and went straight braid to the frog, this enabled me to get a better hook set and give me a chance to pull the fish out of the vegetation as quickly as possible.

Mid-Column Bait

I got 6 topwater hits in the first hour of fishing, after 30 minutes of no bites, I went with a swimbait. I fished the Gambler EZ Swimmer in the Gold Rush color. I had this bait rigged on the same rod and reel I used for the topwater. I used a 5/0 Gamakatsu Screwlock hook. I was throwing this bait right up into the grass and retrieving it as slowly as possible. Most of the fish were hanging out in the grasses and were probably looking to ambush a small baitfish without having to work too hard for it, a few hits came as I had gotten the bait out of the grass. This presentation was effective catching 6 small Bass and getting several more bites without hook ups. Honestly if I was a little sharper on my hook set game I probably would have landed 25 fish on the day, but I caught 6 on the swimbait and I fished it for about an hour or so, so 2 and ½ hours of fishing I had landed 10 small Bass, and should have landed 15, at the very least, these are the type of numbers that can keep a weekend warrior coming out to fish!

Low and Slow

As the sun climbed higher, visibility got brighter, it got hotter. Once the morning mist has been burned away by the sun, that means one thing to a Florida bass angler. It’s time to do the worm. My worm of choice was the Zoom UV Speed Worm, but I still kept it low, and fished it slow. I took the same approach as I did with the swimbait, throwing it as hard, and as far as I could up into the grass and working it out painfully slowly. I tried to bbq fish this bait the best I could, meaning that I kept it low, and fished it slow. I would creep and drag it along the bottom when I could, let it drop and give it a pop or twitch. The slower the better is how it worked on this day.

I was using a 6’10 Medium bait caster with 30 pound braid, and 15 pound fluoro leader. I probably shouldn’t have used the leader, but I thought that with little cloud cover and a bright sun, why not try and be as subtle as possible. I had it Texas rigged on a ¼ oz tungsten, pegged just above the hook. The hook I have really grown to like when fishing into thick grasses and vegetation is the Gamakatsu G-Lock Worm hook, I like how well it bites into the bait when you texpose it, it eliminates a lot of hook pop outs and snags on grass, but you do have to set the hook a bit harder when you feel the bite.

Once again I never caught any “bigguns” but I caught 5 with several more bites in the last hour and some change I got after it before starting the long paddle back in.

Conclusion

East Lake Toho does not get the same recognition and notoriety as it’s big cousin, Big Lake Toho – but I enjoyed it! I didn’t catch anything brag worthy, but that is ok with me, it was my first time, I caught fish, I enjoyed my time on the water and I plan on returning again to launch out of different spots and keep working this lake.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week, cooler weather and hot fishing are coming down the pipe. I hope everyone has a chance to wet a line and feel their rod bend this week ahead. Health, happiness and good fishing to all! Until next time!