Winter Fishing

A close friend and I went fishing yesterday. It was the first time both of us have fished in Georgia in the winter time. It is winter in Georgia, but in season only. The temperatures have been more like early spring than middle winter. With a promised high of 59 degrees by the weather channel and winds less than 10 miles an hour, we set out by canoe to fish a decent size reservoir. My friends canoe has a electric trolling motor that gets us around the reservoir quite nicely. We hit all our usual spots early on and didn't do well at all. His fish finder was not finding any fish and we were starting to get the feeling that we were out there just to take in the scenery.

We decided to try a place we call the 'island' and see if that would change our luck. According to the lunar fish feeding time tables, we were at peak feeding time. After extensively using a couple of my favorite lures I decided to change it up and pop on a deeper running crank bait. On my first cast after retrieving the line a couple feet, I was reacquainted with that marvelous feeling of a hard hitting large mouth bass. I set the hook and began reeling in the first catch of the day. To my disappointment the fish had other ideas about becoming anybodies first catch of the day. After partially jumping from his environment in an attempt to dislodge what he must have thought was a cool, tasty looking little white bait fish, he managed to avoid making it all the way to the canoe for me to revel in that 'first catch' nana nana boo boo to my friend. My friend was not a good consoler either. I think he managed to say something like; too bad dawg.

Let's just say that my part of the fishing trip just went south from there. The new line I put on the night before decided over and over again to not stay on the reel. Sometimes coming off in little loops that were easily fixed and other times coming off in globs of twisted rope from the depths of Hades. I must have had to remove half the line from both reels that I was using that day. I blame this un-natural occurance and the fact I lost the first catch of the day, to the fact my friend half knocked over my tackle box right before we set sail. That, I believe, cursed me for the day.

And as for my friend, well, here is how he fared.........

He caught two largemouths.

And as for me..........

I got skunked