It is said that April showers bring May flowers.

If all of April is like the first few days we will have an abundance of flowers come May, and anything else in the plant family.

April drafted the last few days of March to help it get a good rainy start. And since the windy part of March had come and gone, it complied and helped the month of April get a good start. It did get a good start giving us a several-day period from the end of March right on into the first few days of April with more rainfall than we have had in a long time. Forecast is for more to come also. Maybe the drought is coming to an end.

The in-close and bank fishermen have had a pretty good time around the first of the month catching shellcracker down in the boat basin.

The swimming area was the first spot to see a good congregation of fish and all you had to do was throw out your bait. The water is fairly shallow there so the fish could detect your presence very easily. Don’t fish directly out in front of where you are along the bank. Throw your bait to either side. It is more difficult for the fish to see you when you are not fishing directly in front of your spot on the bank.

It is the same when you are fishing from a boat. Throw to the sides rather than in front of your spot on the boat. They have a harder time detecting you and because of that they are easier to catch. A fish that can see you will not bite as quickly as one that has no idea that you are in the area. A fish that sees you can still be caught, but it is a little harder to get it to bite.

The first of this month of April, it will be hard for the fish to see you as well as harder for you to see them because of the colored water. The last weekend in March we had from 5 to 8 inches of rainfall here in southwest Georgia, maybe more in some areas.

On above us there was 8 inches or more most everywhere. Now that has to come down the Flint and the Hooch as well as Spring Creek. If you pass through Colquitt, you will see Spring Creek all out in the woods. That has to come down through Brinson and on to Lake Seminole. High water coming down both rivers as well as the creek is going to bring up the water level and sweep the bottom once more. It will be dangerous to be on the rivers as large limbs and trees will be floating down and you can’t always see them.

A tree floating a few inches under the surface is called a deadhead and they can make you dead or nearly so. If you hit it go at a high rate of speed your boat may turn over getting you very wet first and then a variety of other things can happen to you.

Rusty Hatton can tell you that the motor may run over you and cut you up some. You may be rendered unconscious and drown. Or you could be thrown from the boat hitting an object in the water and not living through the collision.

So don’t at crazy out there in this high water. You can get hurt when the water is low, but it increasing your chance of getting hurt when the water is up like it is during the springtime after these heavy rains.

You most probably have heard of a new world record crappie being caught recently. I have heard the same thing and have not been able to confirm it. It won’t take long if the catch and the story is true. There is a picture floating around and the picture weighed over 2 pounds. The fish supposedly weighed better than 6 pounds. The fish is big and it would be nice for the new world record to come from Georgia and especially south Georgia.

If you get a chance to see the picture of the fish, look at it. Record or not, it is still a nice fish and though I don’t fish for crappie, because I don’t eat them, I would have loved to have had a chance to catch that fish Just the challenge of landing it on light tackle would be a challenge, and one to enjoy.