IMMOKALEE -- Dale Handshoe dabbled his 10-foot, telescoping crappie rod next to a stand of cattails in Lake Trafford, pulling the bobber attached to the line slowly across the surface. Suddenly the bobber disappeared, so Handshoe lifted the rod and swung a 12-inch crappie into his skiff. He unhooked it from the chartreuse jig it had bitten and placed it in a bucket with 15 others.

“It’s good most of the time,” the 73-year-old retiree from northern Indiana said, referring to the crappie, or speckled perch fishery. “[We were] out here the other morning at 10 minutes to 7 and we got our limit by 9.”

Handshoe has been fishing for crappie and largemouth bass in this 1,500-acre lake since 1980 and has witnessed its many ups and downs, mostly downs.

“I’ve seen the lake change from all weeds to where they killed it and the fish died,” he said. “I watched ’em dredge it. This lake changes every year. It’s going to be a wonderful bass lake one of these days. They released a whole bunch of fingerlings. Now they’re 13 inches and fat as butterballs.”

Handshoe was referring to a 10-year, $20 million restoration of the largest natural freshwater lake south of Okeechobee by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, South Florida Water Management District and other agencies. The project, completed about a year ago, was aimed at bringing what used to be one of the state’s best bass fishing lakes back from the dead. So far, it seems to be working.

Back in the 1990s, Lake Trafford suffered from algae blooms so severe that smelly, dead fish floating belly-up clogged acres of the water body. The fish kills affected mostly largemouth bass; crappie and other species such as bluegill and red-ear sunfish fared a little better.

The local community begged for help to restore the lake, and eventually the state came through—dredging six million cubic yards of muck from the lake bottom, planting 50,000 bulrush plants and other vegetation, and stocking more than 500,000 bass fingerlings from the Florida Bass Conservation Center in Richloam.

“Now we got areas where bass can breed, so hopefully everything’s going to start picking up soon,” said Ski Oleski, owner of Lake Trafford Marina.

Meanwhile, anglers such as Handshoe are catching some bass by accident on their crappie rigs. They have to release most of them because special regulations set an 18-inch minimum size, with a bag limit of five per person, and an allowance to keep one fish 22 inches or larger.

“Effectively, it’s a catch-and-release regulation right now,” said FWC freshwater fisheries administrator Barron Moody.

Waiting for the newly stocked bass to grow up, crappie anglers are doing very well. Many are able to catch their daily bag limit of 25 per person. While there’s no minimum size, Handshoe won’t keep anything under nine inches. The fishery is so strong that the FWC named Lake Trafford one of its top crappie destinations for 2012.

“We feel like the crappie fishing’s come back,” Moody said. “The spawn of 2009 for crappie was particularly strong. Last year and this year, people are catching good numbers of fish.”

Moody said some of the stocked bass will grow big enough to keep about a year from now. It can’t happen too soon for Oleski, who began offering airboat tours in 1996 to make up for lost fishing revenue.

“Business, as far as fishing, is still slow,” Oleski said. “When the bass come back stronger, I’ll see business come back.”