Tour Translation: Looking back on Okeechobee
Japanese native and Cheez-It/Pringles team pro Shinichi Fukae weighs in on his performance during the first Tour stop of the 2014 season
Heading into the opener of 2014 Walmart FLW Tour event at Lake Okeechobee, I pre-fished for several days before the cut-off. Usually, pre-fishing helps me find the best areas to fish as well as the best methods for targeting those fish, but Lake Okeechobee is a bit different than a lot of other bodies of water since the lake conditions can often change dramatically in a few weeks. Sometimes you’ll even find extremely different conditions from one day to the next or even over the span of a few hours.
I have been fishing at Lake Okeechobee about same time each year for past 10 years but every time I fish there I have witnessed different conditions. When I talk about conditions I’m mostly referring to variables such as the water level, the weather and the water temperature, the boat trails, the spawning areas, the locations of all kind of grasses and grass mats, etc. So although I have more than 1,000 waypoints at the lake, most of them don’t work out when I come back to the lake the next year.
From past experience, I kind of knew the lake conditions would change over the two weeks leading to the tournament, but I was shocked about how much change there actually was when I went out fishing on the first day of official practice. Basically, the whole grass mats which I thought would be good areas to fish were completely gone. For me, the feeling is similar to parking your car at parking lot to go shopping and, after 30 minutes, when you come back from shopping, your car disappears from where it was parked.
Fortunately, I had found other good areas during the three-day, official practice which I decided to save for the tournament. Honestly, I had expected that I would have a good tournament; and I couldn’t sleep well the night before tournament since I was so excited.
Well, on day one, Lake Okeechobee showed me its true colors. By 2 p.m. of the first day of the tournament, I had an empty live-well. My boat actually had five fish in it but all the fish were caught by my co-angler, not me. I had almost had given up on the day at that point but things changed significantly after my co-angler and I came to the rescue of some other competitors.
Our fellow competitors were ready for check-in but couldn’t start the engine due to some dead batteries. We tried to start the motor with jumper cables but the charge didn’t go through for some reason even though the electronics and live-well were shut off. So I told them to open the engine cowl so we could connect the cables directly to the starter motor – and luckily it did work out. I never thought my prior experience as an auto and road services mechanic would come in handy in that situation, but thankfully it did.
To return to the main topic, I wound up netting a small limit (11 pounds, 10 ounces) during the rest of day post rescue. On day two, Lake Okeechobee showed me its true colors yet again. I caught a good limit (19 pounds, 2 ounces) and made a big move from 97th to 41st place. The finish was not what I expected, but it was still worth a check for $10,000 – so I’ll take it.
Overall, Lake Okeechobee is one of my favorite lakes to fish. It’s a bit difficult sometimes, but it is so much fun.
My next tournament is the Walmart FLW Tour at Lake Hartwell (March 5-9). I did some pre-fishing there for a couple of days, however, I don’t know how that pre-fishing will work out. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
See y’all next time.
To see Shinichi Fukae’s angler profile page, click here.