Bass pro finds his wayaround Okeechobee

OKEECHOBEE, Fla. -- Brandon Palaniuk has a 250-horsepoewer engine and a high-powered trolling motor on his bass boat to help him go fast.

But for the moment, he was relying on an old-fashioned way to negotiate through a sea of grass in Lake Okeechobee, a world-famous bass lake in the Everglades.

He was using a long push pole, slowly guiding his bass boat through the thick, chest-high vegetation waving in the wind.

"I had never fished this large of an expanse of grass until I came here," said Palaniuk, who is from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and fishes on the Bassmaster Elite pro circuit.

"This is new to me. But I do know that if you can push through this thick stuff and get to a little spot where it opens up, a lot of times, that's where the bass will be.

"There are some huge bass in here; it's just a matter of finding where they live."

Moments after watching an alligator lazily swim through the shallows, Palaniuk found one of those remote openings he was looking for. He started by moving a swimbait across the surface. Then he began flipping a Berkley Pit Boss plastic bait to the edges of the grass.

When he saw his line start to move sideways, he set the hook and watched as a bass burst to the surface. He quickly yanked the 3-pound fish into the boat and admired it for a second before plunking it back.

"There are lots of fish like that in here," Palaniuk said. "It takes big ones to win a tournament here."

Palaniuk caught one of those big ones - a bass he estimated at 8 pounds - the day before. And in his first day on the lake, he landed five bass that he estimated would push 25 pounds.

Tournament practice

He caught some of that action on a video with a small camera that he mounts to the side of his boat. He posted that video on his website, bmpfishing.com, then he resumed his week-long search for Florida bass.

Now he was moving around, exploring new areas. He was practicing for the Bassmaster Elite tournament March 22-25 at Okeechobee. More than anything, he was looking for little hard-to-reach hot spots that might pay off in a national tournament.

"It's late January and we have more than a foot of snow on the ground back in Idaho," Palaniuk said. "Here, the water temperature is in the 70s and the bass are getting ready to spawn."

Palaniuk knows prospecting for out-of-the way spots may pay off.

That's why he had been fishing from sunup to sundown for four straight days, trying to uncover some of the secrets to fishing a massive body of water like Okeechobee.

The Big O is the second-largest freshwater body of water in the contiguous United States and looms like an inland ocean. It covers 730 square miles and includes more than 150,000 acres of vegetation.

That's a lot of room for bass to hide. But there are huge prizes in the center of those mazes.

'Just a little different'

Consider an FLW Tour event at Okeechobee on Feb. 9-12. The winner, Randall Tharp of Gardendale, Ala., caught 20 bass weighing a whopping 101 pounds, 12 ounces. That was an FLW Tour record and proof that Lake Okeechobee still has monstrous bass.

Tharp was flipping a plastic bait, using a heavy weight to punch it through the thick mats of vegetation.

"It was a lot colder than usual down there for February, and I think the bass were keeping warm under those mats," Tharp said.

When Palaniuk went fishing, it was Chamber of Commerce weather. Temperatures were in the mid to high 70s, and a warm breeze rippled the water.

But that doesn't mean the bass were super aggressive. Palaniuk caught bass, but he had to work for them. He made countless casts to the edge of vegetation before finally getting a strike.

"Okeechobee is like everyplace else. You try to pick out areas that are just a little different from the other spots," he said. "It might be a place that has cattails instead of reeds, or maybe spots where hydrilla is mixed in, or a little point in the grass. That's what will attract bass."

For Palaniuk, 24, such days of fishing are part of living the dream.

A heavy-machinery operator, he did well in regional tournaments in Idaho and went on to win the BASS Federation Nation Tournament in 2010, which earned him a berth in the 2011 Bassmaster Classic.

He finished fourth in that event, then did well in his first year on the Elite Pro Tour, finishing in the money in six of eight tournaments.

He will fish in his second consecutive Classic this week on the Red River out of Shreveport, La.

He is on the road constantly, practicing for tournaments and trying to learn new bodies of water. He often sleeps in the back of his pickup camper to save money.

At Okeechobee, he allowed himself the rare treat of staying in a motel.

"I've learned that you can survive on peanut butter and jelly for a year," he joked. "But this has been great. To be able to come to places like Okeechobee and fish for a week, that's something I had always dreamed about."