We have heard about global warming for several years now, but after last week we probably should be looking for an impending ice age. Two weeks prior to this cold weather visiting Southwest Georgia, another visit was made that cooled things off quite a bit. It won’t take many weeks like those to make this winter one for the record books.

I am certainly not complaining either. We need cold weather for some fruits to do good and make an abundant crop. It also makes us feel better. A winter season that has very little cold weather is not a winter we appreciate or like. The winter coat that the animals put on did not go to waste. I don’t think I took off my long coat much this week. Spring is less than 6 weeks away, so we can expect it to get warmer soon.

We will still have some cool weather after the spring season arrives. No one wants it to leave winter and move right into summer. I would rather fish during the summer than the winter, even though the fish aren’t very active during the extremes of either season. During the summer you may just pick up a fish or two along and at the end of the day have enough to eat or release and brag about the next day. You may, if lucky, find a spot in fairly deep water that may be a few degrees cooler than the surrounding area that will be holding a decent school of fish. Fish don’t eat much when the weather is really hot, so feel good about what you catch a lot or a little.

Winter fishing is very similar in that the fish are not very active, making them just as hard to catch as they are in the hottest part of the summer. Extreme heat or extreme cold slows the metabolic rate so much that fish really don’t have to eat much to sustain themselves. Most of the times a bait passes in front of an inactive fish he or she will not even make an effort to try and eat it. It seems that your next door neighbor is the person there to make cast number 20 that results in that strike, and he will let you know about it when he gets home and every time he sees you for the next few weeks. We are still in this winter pattern of fishing and will be for another few days.

I have told you this before: fish the old creek run on the creek side of the lake and the edges of the river channel for those easier-to-catch bass during the winter. I had rather fish the creek because it is not wide and I can fish both sides of it if I have to get a strike. There are places along the old creek bank that have decent structure and will produce fish from year to year. When you find one of these “honey holes,” remember it.

I know one of these spots that at times will hold so many fish that even in muddy water you can get several fish. I think that they are detecting the vibration of the moving spoon and are trying to get it so aggressively that the treble hooks sometimes snags them in the belly or under the mouth. At times I have actually taken as many fish not hooked in the mouth as I have with. Later on, I couldn’t tell the difference in the taste of the fouled-hooked fish versus the mouth-caught fish. The middle and end of last week would have been a good time to go jigging, but work got in the way. Doctor bill is probably less also.