Auten Looking For Change In Weather For Rayovac Series On Okeechobee
Todd Auten is looking for better conditions on Okeechobee
Todd Auten is hoping for warmer weather, warmer water and, hopefully, more fish when he gets to Lake Okeechobee next week for the 2015 FLW Rayovac Series Southeast Division opener.
Auten has been further north in Florida, practicing for and fishing in the first B.A.S.S. Southern Open of 2015 on Lake Tohopekaliga this week and fishing has been “kind of tough,” with rain, cold and hard to find fish. The Open runs through Saturday and Auten will leave Toho to go straight to Okeechobee and start practice for the Rayovac tournament.
He finished 51st in the first Southeast Division Rayovac tournament on Okeechobee last year, then followed that with 7th place on Santee Cooper in March and 42nd on Lake Guntersville in April to finish 8th in the Southeast Division points for the year. Auten then finished 4th in the Rayovac FLW Series Championship on Wheeler Lake held in late October and early November.
“The tournament on Okeechobee is about the same time as last year,” he said. “I’ve already checked my good spots and it is going to be different. The water is high and everything is going to be changed, for sure. With the water down a foot it would help put them in certain places; now they can be anywhere. They are kind of scattered.”
If that is the case, he said, he expects reaction baits, like Speed Worms and flipping Brush Hogs to be the best tactics.
“But, I have never fished down there with the water being this high,” he said. “Every year it seems like it is different. You have to go out and find new fish every year. They will be in kind of the same areas, but not in the exact same places.”
When he gets to Okeechobee Auten said he will be looking for clean water and possibly some bedding fish.
“I heard they were spawning pretty good down there the last week or so. I hope the cold weather has pushed some of them off because that means more fish will go up shallow for sure next week when we are there.”
While he won’t pass up bedding fish, Auten said he will also concentrate on those areas just off the bedding places where the fish will be staging to move up.
“If they are not on the bed they will be out at the next depth,” he said. “I’ll get in stuff a little further out and work my way in.”
One thing he can count on. The weather is expected to be a lot nicer on Okeechobee next week than it was on Tohopekaliga this week, with temperatures ranging from the mid- to high 70s under partly cloudy to sunny skies.
FLW Rayovac Series – Southeast Division
Jan 22-24, 2015
Lake Okeechobee
Roland Martin Marina & Resort
