I didn’t wait late enough to write last week or I would have had snowflakes on my computer.

But we did get some snow and not enough to hurt anything except the feelings of those that wanted to make snowmen.

Not very far to our north there were plenty of snowmen made. One fellow had a fairly large tent in the yard of his store and enough snow came to weight it down and crash to the ground. Notice the following Monday when more snow was predicted, none came. My youngest granddaughter looked at it from a window. I told my son to show her the snow as she may be grown before she sees it again here. She is 3.

Now that the snow for this decade is over, maybe we can get on to some warmer weather. Not that I am ready for summer, but I am ready for some relief from this cold weather we have been having since Christmas. It is not often that we have a cold winter, but this particular winter has been one for the record books.

It needs to be a little warmer for the fishing season to get kicked off and a lot warmer for the fish to really start biting. Catfish are doing OK for those that can stand the cold weather and the ever-blowing wind. There are other fish that bite during the colder times and they include the yellow perch as well as the jackfish. You can get by lipping a yellow perch, but it would be best not to do that with a jackfish. Those razor-sharp teeth will make you wish you didn’t even know how to fish or anything else around the water, but one caught and prepared right is about as good as fish get.

I have seen some lures from the Pradco bunch that are priced like lures from 10 or 15 years ago. They are from Rebel, Bomber and Cordell and look good as well as being not so expensive. Start looking for these in the stores in a week or two and use them to help you get that limit of bass and jackfish. There are some good colors in the grouping as well as plugs that you already use.

You know that turkey season is less than a month away and the hunters are about to get anxious to get back in the woods looking for something to shoot. I talked to one hunter tonight at the eatery and he was almost ready to shoot a fish if one would jump from the water.

Much of that and you couldn’t pay a bass to jump and try to throw a topwater plug. If you have fished much you most assuredly have had a bass throw a plug back at you and it is no fun at all. It is hard enough to get one to hit your lure at times and then have it come back at you faster than when it left is not something you want to happen very often.

The largest bass I ever had on my line threw a jitterbug back at me late one afternoon. I hated to miss that fish as it would have gone somewhere in the midteens. It was only about 20 feet away from me when it threw the lure and was half out of the water doing that. It was just another lesson learned. Probably good that it got away as I would have wanted to mount her and really didn’t have the money at that time.

Several companies have out this year a turkey call that is called a screaming hen. It is the newest thing in turkey hunting that has come along in a number of years. The one I have is from HS Strut and was designed by Eddie Salter.

I saw Eddie last month and he was telling me about the call and assured me it would help in getting a big ole gobbler to come to my table. That is a good thing as I am tired of eating all this quail and deer and fresh fish. A wild turkey is something that is hard to beat.