Nothing makes me feel better than a good bite on a 8″ Huddleston!  I finally got a day of fishing where the wind was <20MPH and was able to setup and just fish, and I caught a nice one.  A lot of why I decided to come to West Palm Beach is access to Okeechobee. I have a sweet deal going where I store my boat at the lake and have a place to stay on the weekends, so that is just working out beautifully.  I have a lot of bigbait sessions ahead of me I hope.  The water level is 14.7 or something, so it’s falling out pretty quick.  But, I’m looking forward to another couple months of fishing for sure.  It was 85 degrees out there this day.

The 8″ Weedless Huddleston is something I’ve been mentally preparing myself for a while. I just haven’t had many sessions with it, where I could commit and throw it the majority of the day.  I really like the way the bait fishes.  The line tie on the nose makes it a ‘superior’ bait?  I don’t know if that makes sense, but I really like the line tie on the nose.  It just swims and fishes and orients right to you.  I am fishing it on straight 80 pound Power Pro Spectra, and Calcutta 400 TE and Loomis 966 BBR.  I just love that setup and with braid, its like, plus one or plus two more better.  I just love braid.   The braid is key for snatching and snapping your bait free in the grass.  If you muck up, a hard pop or jerk will often clear the bait and you fish thru.  At distance, these are things that cannot be done with anything but braid.  Couple that, with my experiences with the Grass Minnow, Weedless Shad and 6″ Weedless Trout, I know that braid is the deal with those baits, so to me, this was a no brainer.

Don’t hate because I have that carp/orange trout color on the 8″ Weedless.  Really, I have one.  I really hope Ken and Dennis come up with colors like this, and make them staples in their lineup.  I love the nightstalker color, and I love this color too. I really like the golden shiner color too. I just prefer darker/dark baits that would go good in the Okeechobee water.  The Night Stalker color looks fantastic in the Okeechobee water.  White has never been a good color of moving bait (save a chatterbait or spinnerbait) for me on Okeechobee with swimbaits/swimming worms.    I know other colors of the 8″ Huddleston will work on Okeechobobee too. I’ve caught them on hitch on baby bass, the non-weedless versions.

I’m landing the bites I’m getting on the 8″ Weedless, and they tend to be >6 pound fish.   They are awesome bites and you’ll have to be patient to see the film. I hope our next DVD might be a bigbait fishing thing in Florida.  Grass fishing.  Haven’t put it all together by a long shot, and if I’ve learned anything at 35, I know better to than to make claims and predictions, especially if they involve fish or women!  You cannot predict the fish.  You just don’t know how things will play out with the filming and footage and flow.  I sure hope I find a balance of work, social life, fishing Okeechobee and surfing around Jupiter and North!  I hope it works out and I make good decisions and have good flow.  We shall see. It has been anything but an easy transition back into corporate life, in a new city I’ve never lived.   But……8″ Huddleston bites do a man right!