Dave Lefebre – Okeechobee Practice Notes New Rods, Power Poles and Sand Castles

Just finished the last day of practice for first FLW Tour Open on Lake Okeechobee. On the first day I caught the snot out of them, the best day I’ve ever had, at least the biggest 5 fish limit anyway. I think it would have weighed around 33 lbs, hard to tell for sure, but I had two that I think were at least 10 pounds, lol. My best 5 before that was at Santee Cooper in a BASS Tour event during my rookie year, they weighed a little over 28 pounds. This place is incredible and the weather is shaping up to really show its true colors. I’m not saying I’m going to whack them, but there will be some gigantic bags for sure. I need some good luck.

I’ve been having a lot of fun breaking in the new Dobyns Rods. I really love them, but I still need to narrow down the exact ones I need. I’ve caught over 100 bass on the 735 and I know that rod will be one of my favorites. I’ve also jacked a few on his 8 foot, heavy flip rod and it is definitely the right deal. I really like 8 foot rods and this one suits me perfectly, not too stiff.

This is also the first few days I’ve had Power Poles on my boat. I’m borrowing Scott Martin’s boat for this event and he has them on there…awesome, I was really missing the boat the last few years without them. Can’t wait to get my boat, it’s supposed to be done next week. Scott’s boat is working OK but it doesn’t have a hot foot pedal and his GPS at the dash is like a 40 inch flat screen TV, stupidly huge, lol. He also strategically placed baits and stuff around to mess with my head, but not falling for none of it. I really appreciate him letting me abuse his rig for the week, it certainly has some history on this lake, I just hope it works for me too.

Tomorrow is our official day off. I have a photo shoot in the morning at 7:00am, then a bunch of other press stuff to do. I hope I can find the time to get everything rigged and condensed, I need like 4 hours at least. The boat is a mess and my tackle is scattered all over the place. I also have to make time to play some shuffle board with Mitchell, he loves that game. We have a court about 100 feet from our camper here at Okeechobee Landings RV Resort.

Speaking of Mitchell, the family came out in the boat with me this morning. Macy and Mitchell love going out on the water when we are down here to look for alligators. We saw quite a few, and there are some huge ones laying on the banks, bigger than I’ve ever seen here. For some reason a lot of them are swimming around out in the middle of the lake, way off shore. I don’t know what they are doing way out there, but it seems strange to me???

Florida is so awesome. We went to the beach two days in a row before practice started and had a blast. The weather has been perfect, 72-82 degrees everyday so far, it was exactly 1 degree when we left Erie…amazing. Anne and the kids spent hours making a huge sand castle, I told Anne I would show the world how beautiful it was so here it is. Isn’t it so beautiful?

Well, I’m off, lots to do. Have a great week everybody, I’ll talk to you after this tournament, hopefully I’m happy. And hopefully Pittsburgh’s happy too. Go Steelers!

For more about Dave Lefebre, go to his website: www.davelefebre.com