Phil Szafransky

[John Bales]

Phil has made a move from the midwest to the state of Florida. Even before he made this move, we had conversations on my limited experiences I have had and talked about some situations he might run into. What a muck line looks like, how to set your depth finder in order to identify the muck lines, speed control changes that differ from north to south and so on. Like all of us, we must learn what the area offers in the way of structures and I might say that from the natural lakes in the north to the shallower and less defined features, it is a night and day thing to get used to. One change is that the easy musky and northern pike and walleye do not exist in Florida. A fisherman's presentation of lures will have to be more on the money with the bass. Many bottoms in the Florida lakes you cannot bump so this will take away from getting them to take the lures. Big changes in everything that Phil had to see and experience. As he learned and shared, I too learned. Success did not come right away as different lakes were mapped, populations of bass were taken into consideration. Past happenings with the lakes come into play and the good and bad must be weighed. Mapping and the catching takes time as a person changes who whole ball of wax in his fishing life.
With a couple years under his belt, he has been making catches of some really big bass which we do not have here in the north. Recently, he has found a lake in Florida that is very unusual for the Florida lakes and that is one with good depth and many secluded deep holes with saddles and humps. Any good spoonplugger will start shallow and finish somewhere in and around the deeper areas of a body of water. It is the only way to get total knowledge of any body of water. Phil keeps extending his depth control a little deeper at a time and is finding out that the fish that live in Florida are no different than any other area of the country. The impressive part of his mapping is how large these deeper features are and the depth's he is making contact with the bass. When someone sends me a map and I see that the depth's they are making contact with the fish are in the extreme depths, I pay more attention to the detail and go through the mapping process of what it would take to find these very small fishing SPOTS in such a large area of fishing water. This is impressive. As those of you who are members of the national and took the time to study Phil's article of one of his fishing situations he decided to share. If you want to be a great spoonplugger, study his maps he shares. This is exactly what it takes to become a very good spoonplugger. This is the kind of effort it takes to find satisfaction in your own fishing. I doubt if there are many who would come to the same findings he has done in his home waters. The depth would scare most spoonpluggers away from this situation but not Phil. Mr. Perry said if you are not catching fish, you are not going deep enough. Phil is very serious about following guidelines. By doing so, he finds success on a regular basis. Hats off to you Phil for doing your homework. You are one of the best. John

[beckman44]

John; You are exactly right. Phil follows the guidelines and his results show. He should be an example to all of us. He puts the work in and pays attention to all the details . He not only read and studied all the material, he follows it to a T. Buck would give him a high grade. Bill.

[phillip szafranski]

John and Bill, I appreciate the kind words but it was not necessary! I would like to take this opportunity to encourage those not members of the National to consider joining by sending an email to buckperry90.com to find out how to subscribe. As John Bales has stated in another posts, feel free to send pictures, articles or feedback for future considerion of publishing in the Newsletter...same email address would apply.
Thanks.