Year in and year out, veteran Georgia pro Mickey Bruce fishes well on Lake Okeechobee -- which, despite being loaded with big fish, is a tough place to consistently do well even for people who live there.

A big reason for that is because the lake changes every year. A few years ago the water level was low, and since Okeechobee is so shallow that meant it was a vastly different lake than the prior year. Then, in January 2002, the lake had just risen so newly-flooded cover was everywhere.

This year the lake was totally different again. The water was still high, but Okeechobee's millions of mats of floating vegetation had shifted around so it looked completely different. Some second-year tour pros were amazed at how different the lake was.

So how does Bruce do well every year while many excellent fishermen don't? Here's his take on it.

Accounting for Conditions

"Okeechobee is a unique lake to begin with," he says. "The average weekend fisherman, especially those who aren't familiar with the lake -- don't realize how much it changes from one year to the next.

"The last time we were there (in 2002), the lake had just risen and was full of vines, briars and bushes, which is good. From my experience over the years, I know that when a lake first rises -- it doesn't matter whether it's a mountain lake, a lowland reservoir or a lake like Okeechobee -- fish hit the bank. They go as far back as they can go.

"That's how it was last year, but this year the lake was different," Bruce says. "It had been up for a while so it killed some of the quick-growing vegetation, the vines and briars. So fish going to the bank wasn't a factor.

"My other deal is paying attention to what will happen," he says. "I try to take the whole picture into mind: what happened before (he gets to the lake) and what will happen. That goes for whenever I approach a tournament, wherever it is."

This time at Okeechobee, he knew that "a lot of fish had already spawned before we got there. But they have a long spawning period there so another wave was coming. And if the weather was right, it could be the biggest spawn of the year. But watching that weather forecast (for cold fronts), I knew that (getting a few) quality bites would be the deal."

That was important when forming his expectations. "On a good day, I knew that a 50 percent bite-to-land ratio would be good."

Picking an Area

Then he considered the weather when picking an area to fish. "I looked at a map to find areas where fish should spawn. January, full moon, Okeechobee -- that meant they were spawning or close to the spawn, and that eliminated about 300,000 acres of that 450,000-acre lake.

"I also figured in the weather," he says. That meant "the traditional way the winds blow when the front comes. The wind blows water from one end of the lake to the other, which makes the mats move. If you practice in the wrong spot, everything you'd been fishing for a week will be gone (as happened to five competitors on day 3 of the Okeechobee FLW). I prepared myself for all of that."

Zeroing In

"The fish use the mats just like a rockpile or creek channel," Bruce says. "They stop there on their migration to and from spawning areas." He knew that, and also that "in every pattern there's another pattern. The more you do it, the more you get keyed in one which (cover) is good and which is bad."

In the case of Okeechobee's floating mats of vegetation, "the average person sees nothing but one mat after the other after the other. But what makes this one better than that one?" One example is the type of bottom. "Hard sand, rock or mud -- that makes all the difference in the world."

Once he found the right area, he was set. He knew the pattern -- flipping the mats -- but "had to figure out how to catch the fish because the word had gotten out. A lot of people were doing it, so I had to figured out a way of catching them after other people had pounded (an area)."

What helped him there was he knew that during a cold front, Okeechobee's bass "back up and get dormant, but won't leave the area. The key is not the area. It's the slowness of the presentation. You had to have patience to catch these fish. Sometimes the bait would actually be in the same spot for over a minute. That's a long time to work a bait up and down.

"And most bites you didn't even feel, even with braided line. The lure just stopped falling. The fish were so dormant that when they bit it, it didn't move. I guarantee people got bites and didn't know it.

"The other key was no depthfinder, no trolling motor and as little aeration as possible," he says. "You just wanted to float into those mats and sit there. A lot of guys had their trolling motors on and were moving from one mat to the next, but they were doing more damage than good."

General Principles

Bruce's approach to Okeechobee works for other lakes too. "Each lake is a different creature and has a personality of its own," he notes. "I try to apply as much commons sense to it as I possibly can."

He adds that information on conditions "is available to everyone. But how we use it is the difference between being successful and not."

A few general principles are:

> "I try to spend most of my time where most of the fish are," he says. "What I mean by that is that I eliminate as much of the lake as I can before I go. That way I spend most of my time where I think most of the fish are given their seasonal movements."

> Practice for the conditions, including the weather and fishing pressure.

> "Have confidence in what you're doing. You have to get confidence somehow or the other. That's the key. If you didn't have confidence (at Okeechobee), you wouldn't catch one. Some awfully good fishermen did badly down there."

Notes

> After day 1 of the Okeechobee FLW, Bruce was in 7th with an 18-11 limit. But his day 2 decision to save fish cost him. He weighed in only 2 fish for 7-02 and finished 14th.

> "On Okeechobee you need to practice in a lot of places," he says. "But in a tournament you need to pick an area and spend the day there. And you have to fish slowly." That perspective "comes from years and years of fishing down there."