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How to Fish Cypress Gardens, Florida

Hi Ron! Cypress Gardens is situated on Lake Eloise on the Winter Haven chain of lakes.  This is a bit deeper, but very recognizable Florida pattern lakes.  These lakes are urban lakes, with little in terms of older, natural shoreline, and therefore have very little of your traditional targets for jigs.

Bass jigs are rarely used in Florida lakes due to the prevailing cover.  The bass inhabit weed beds, both emergent and submergent, often very dense and difficult to get even a plastic worm through.  Jigs are at their best when used as drop baits, and drop baits assume a known target.  Here in Florida, to the unfamiliar eye, everything looks good but you don't have time to fish it all. Given lakes such as the Winter Haven Chain that do not contain Cypress Trees or other vertical cover to which the bass can relate, even the most dedicated jig fishermen have to search hard for their targets.  The most successful jig patterns are swimming a jig across the top of a shallow weed bed, or bouncing the jig down a slope when you can find one.   These lakes have a little color to them and either a pumpkinseed/chartreuse or the old reliable black/blue are the local favorite color combinations. 

In Winter Haven, you do have about the best lakes we have to offer for bouncing down a slope.  Lake Summit is just north of Cypress Gardens, but the park sometimes reserves access.  If you run to the canal due west of Cypress Gardens as soon as you pop through to the next lake, (Lake Lulu), there will be a canal that exits to your right.  This canal goes to a small lake, Lake Roy.  Although only 75 acres, it's one of the deeper lakes in the state, averaging about 25 feet.  There is a flat ringing the lake in about 10 feet, with a rapid slope down to 25.  There are some structures in the lake, notable a funnel cut on the west side and a tapering cove in the rear of the lake.  If I had only one place to try a jig, this would be it.  There are a couple of deep coves with natural cover on the south end of both Eloise and Winterset, but we're now targeting about 25 acres in a 6,000 acre chain.

If I were fishing Winter Haven in November, I'd target either Lake Winterset on the South East Corner of the chain, or Lake Hartridge on the extreme other end of the chain.  Winterset will have some pepper grass left in November, mostly on the west side of the lake.  Jerk baits or spinner baits will produce there in the late fall.  Lake Hartridge is normally full of hydrilla, where the same baits will produce along with both Carolina and Texas rigged worms.  Hartridge will usually host some schoolers around the deeper holes at the lake's entrance from the canal, so keep an eye out.  And anytime you're over grass, either pepper grass or hydrilla after a few days of a warming trend, it's always worth at least a few casts with a top water bait.  A nice, slow and subtle top water in cool water may result in a double digit fish for your trouble.

Just don't blame me if you get your arm pulled out of socket. :-)   Best of luck!

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