Harris Chain of Lakes in Central Florida is a dream destination for bass fishermen

The Harris Chain of Lakes in Central Florida is one of the state’s best bass fishing destinations. But after visiting Lake Harris for the first time with Bassmaster pro Tim Frederick as my guide, the fishing was even better than I’d expected.

“The Harris Chain is a great place to fish no matter what you like to do as far as bass fishing, crappie fishing, shellcracker, bluegill, it has a mixture of everything,” Frederick said. “It has a variety of different covers: Kissimmee grass, a little hydrilla, trees, lily pads. It kind of fits every bass fisherman’s style because you can do anything. It’s a healthy, healthy fishery, and it’s fun.”

I was covering an Epson Tour golf tournament, the 2023 Inova Mission Inn Resort & Club Championship on the resort’s El Campeon course in nearby Howey-in-the-Hills, but I had time for some early morning fishing. I connected with Frederick through a mutual friend, bass pro Bernie Schultz, who said, “No one knows that chain better.”

Frederick, who grew up in Leesburg and was so dominant in tournaments on the chain that he left his job building custom closets to become a full-time pro, had just come home after three events and 24 days on the road.

I met him on an overcast morning at a boat ramp on Little Lake Harris, one of nine lakes in the chain, and he headed north in his 21 1/2-foot Falcon bass boat to a spot where he and his son had caught about 50 largemouth bass a couple of evenings earlier. When we arrived, a member of a local bass club was fishing the spot, so Frederick idled a few hundred yards away to a wooden boat dock extending across a bed of Kissimmee grass from one of the many homes on the picturesque lake.

Casting a shallow-running American Baitworks crankbait, Frederick quickly caught a bass and told me where to throw my lure. After a couple of casts, a feisty bass slammed my crankbait. Those two fish were the first of what turned out to be dozens of largemouths for us, and we frequently reeled in bass at the same time.

It was nonstop catching and releasing for two hours, until I had to return to the golf course at Mission Inn, which has a small marina on the lake that offers rental boats and boat slips.

Frederick noted that given all the different habitats and water on the Harris Chain, it could be difficult to decide where to fish.

“For a first-time angler on this body of water, don’t get overwhelmed, just get on a shoreline and fish,” he said. “I think you can get on a Kissimmee grass line and never lift your trolling motor, whether you’re flipping grass or throwing a lipless crankbait like a Rat-L-Trap.

“Obviously, there’s key spots here and there, but you’ll figure that out along the way. Hard bottom is what you want to find, whether it’s sand or shell beds off the Kissimmee grass. What happens on those shell bars is there’s mussels on them and it keeps the baitfish around. The bluegills eat the mussels and the bass eat the bluegills.”

Frederick, 54, started fishing bass tournaments by himself on the Harris Chain when he was 15. Over the years, he won numerous events and dreamed of turning professional to fish the major bass circuits.

“But I thought, ‘Here I am just a little country kid from Lake County.’ I didn’t know how to go about it or anything,” Frederick said. “As I got older, you’re working and you’re fishing on the weekends. I started fishing a trail that went all over Florida and I had some success on that, I was the leading money winner.”

As the expenses of traveling to and fishing in tournaments increased, Frederick needed to get some sponsors to help defray the costs. His first, in 2006, was Power-Pole. The Tampa company, which makes an innovative anchoring system for boats and recently introduced a trolling motor, still sponsors Frederick, who fishes Bassmaster Opens in the hopes of advancing to the Bassmaster Elite series. The truck he uses to tow his boat around the country is provided by another major sponsor, Eagle Buick GMC in Homosassa.

Frederick qualified for the former FLW Tour for 2016, but he needed help with the $30,000 in entry fees. Lake County, which is home to most of the Harris Chain, stepped up and Frederick, who won the 2018 FLW event on Lake Okeechobee, serves as the chain’s ambassador, recruiting major tournaments to the area.

“My job was tough in the beginning, but it’s gotten a lot easier because now everybody wants to come here,” he said. “It’s an amazing resource that we have. It’s a fisherman’s paradise.”

And it won’t take you more than a few casts to find that out.