Fishing and Ghosts in Orlando

I'm in Orlando doing some Bass fishing and taking in some quality family time.  Notice I said, "fishing" first.  I am enjoying the quality time, don't get me wrong, but the water temperature in and around Orlando has dropped a few degrees, so the bite is on.  I'm a hopeless addict.  I knew where the family would be staying and started calling around on Tuesday.  I found out through a local guide that Lake Toho was on.  It's a shallow lake, and if I was into poling the edges, "which I am", it would be an ideal place to crash some grass. So I brought my canoe, my pusher pole, a pair of waders, a couple different poles, a cooler and all the rest of my fishing necessities.  My girlfriend brought one bag.  When I finally had the car fully loaded with all my gear, she snidely asked, "is there even room for me"?

The guide was right, Lake Toho was hopping.  Early this morning I got a couple strong hits on top-water   I was using a heavy frog pattern, with a double weed-guard on it.  It's my mouse pattern, made out of spun deer hair, with a couple of tied legs.  It's an ugly fly, it lands with a huge slap, no grace, no finesse just power and double haul it, til gets away from you. It's not a delicate, drop gently on the water type of fly, it's a scare-the-crap outta what ever is around it beast of lure.  If there are fish around, and they are keyed in on movement and are using their lateral lines to hunt with, not their eyes, which is generally the case in low light situations or early morning.  The frog or mouse pattern are essential and will lead to low light, top-water action.

I switched over to streamers as the day warmed up.  I didn't have any luck with both streamers and glass minnow types.  It's tough to match the hatch when you don't know what the hatch is.  So I switched to shrimp/scud, bottom swimming types, again no luck.  I had zero takes from 7 til almost 10.  I blame that on user error and not knowing the area.  I saw plenty of movement, but had no hits or interest shown to any of my flies.  I honestly think it was from poling and making too much noise in the canoe.  I may have been fishing an area that had been heavily fished the day before as well, I wasn't sure.  I hit the docks and started to have better luck.  I crashed the docks with popping style top-waters and caught 2 little bass around 10:30.

I need to come back out again in the morning, or even this evening to see what is going off.  I doubt that will happen though since like I said, this is family time.  I believe we are checking out a ghost tour tonight in downtown Orlando?  I may have some ghost stories to tell later along with the fish stories.  I have feeling though, the ghost stories may be a little better because they are being told by a guide and not left for me to discover on my own.  I'll check back in later if there is a story to tell about the ghosts of Orlando.