Just over six months ago, it was last Christmas. Six months from now it will be New Year’s Day.

Time does fly, whether we are having fun or not.

Right now we are enjoying the water whether it be fishing, swimming or some other water sports. The Fourth is a time to do this and many of our local citizens will be doing just that. Six months from now, the hunting seasons will be drawing to a close. Most of this summer I have been having fun and plan on that continuing right on into the fall and winter with the hunting seasons.

During the last month, I have visited both Georgia sides of Lake Seminole as well as the Florida side. With that I have also visited the several lakes around us in Georgia, Florida and Alabama and am hearing the same thing regardless or where I go.

If you go fishing, you have an excellent chance of catching a goodly amount of catfish along with the bream and shellcracker that you can hardly keep off your line. This is happening everywhere.

Sooner or later the heat is going to get so intense that it will affect the fishing and the catch is going to slow. But until then you need to keep on keeping on.

Early morning fishing will be the very best while late afternoon fishing won’t be bad.  The problem with late afternoon fishing is the heat is still very high, not having gone down very much. This time of day is very good if we have had a mid- to late-afternoon shower. The fish will be more active as will you because the rain will have dropped the air temperature, especially for you, and the surface water temperature, especially for the fish.

July is the month that most fishing tackle companies begin to introduce the new stuff for the next year. July is the beginning, but September is when it starts to heat up.

We will see some stuff in July, but hear about a lot more to come before Christmas, giving you something to make a Christmas list with. The quicker that list gets made, the more likely that your wife or girlfriend is going to be able to surprise you with it at Christmas. When you have owned as much fishing tackle as I have during your life, my wife just goes for the newest golf shirt in fat boy size.

If you are going out on the big part of the lake or the river just as it makes its way into the lake, take some red plastic worms.

When you come in with a stringer of bass no one will believe that you caught them on a red worm, a red plastic worm. That is what I always tied on for my kids when they were young.

One afternoon, Kim caught so many she got tired of reeling them in. David caught a great many with the mighty 202. He did that at a very young age as I had put him in the driver’s seat of a Zebco One by the time he was 4 years old. Now he realizes just how tough it is to catch a good stringer of fish everytime he goes fishing. I think the rest of them still have something to learn. Kim still catches them hand over fist and knowing that I am working sends me a picture to my cell phone. One day I am going to learn how to send pictures over my cell phone to her.

When we get to September you need to switch to earth-tone colors for the bass. A lot of colors will catch fish at anytime, I have just had good luck with the different browns, all the way from chocolate to pumpkin seed.

September is usually a slow month for catching and anything that will give a fisherman a little edge, he will try. I know I have tried some strange things trying to catch a fish and sometime they do work. Of course, if they don’t I don’t do that again and pretty quick forget that prized bit of knowledge.

I hope that the Fourth of July weekend is the weekend for you to fill your limit and the time that the children learn all about fishing and feeding themselves. I hope also that we never go back to a time when we have to fish just for something to eat.  We could all get very slim very quickly if something like that came upon us.