“Dammit, I do not want to go to work today”, I mumbled under my tired breath. After all, it’s been a long week at work. I turn over and quickly rose the warm covers to my face, only to hear Kara ask…”What are you doing, aren’t you fishing with Brent today?”
“Oh wait a minute, I am fishing today”, I thought to myself as a sprung out of bed like a kid on Christmas morning. It was Sunday…. A day to fish!!!!
The night before, I loaded the boat up and had everything ready to go. I was suppose to meet Brent at our usual spot in less than 20 minutes, so I rushed to get ready.
That night the weatherman predicted a small cold front that may offer a wintry mix of ice and snow, but what I was about to see was not expected. I walked outside and was greeted by a stiff north wind and a blanket of snow. The boat had about 6 inches of snow inside, and ice and snow blanketed the earth. “Wow” I thought, “Should I call Brent and cancel?”Knowing Brent is about as big as a nutcase as I, I feared he’d call me a pansy and tell me to get my tail out to the dock. So away to the gas station I went…..
As Brent pulled up to the rendezvous point, he noticed me scraping ice off the windshield of our boat. As he drove past me, the huge grin on his face said it all! We were going fishing, no matter what!
We got to the boat ramp and started talking about the conditions. The wind was blowing as hard as it wanted, the temps were in the lower 20’s, and the boat was covered in snow…. But we had gone this far so there was no turning back!
We put the boat in without another thought of canceling. We just knew we’d find some fish somewhere, but the “somewhere” was the question that had us puzzled.
I throttled the Honda Four stroke and once again, we were on our way to catch some fish. Laughter rang from our boat as we neared our spot…”Are we truly insane?” I yelled as we took in water from the wind beaten bay. We were up against a ruff, cold experience…. That’s for sure!
We headed over to the lagoons as we figured this would be our best place to start. It’s a shallow, backcountry area that tends to warm up quickly and hold a decent number of pre-spawn bass this time of year. Once we hit the no-wake zone at Misery Bay, I noticed that the water temps were reading a staggering 38 degrees. I just knew in my mind that this day would be a wash. “But what the hell, we’re fishing” I said to Brent as we approached the lagoons.
Working a Texas Rigged Powerworm was my game plan, and Brent started out with a small swim bait. Cast upon cast, we didn’t even draw a bite…. The further and further we got into the lagoons, the warmer the water became so I knew I could find some sort of pattern. Looking to entice a “reaction” bite, I tied on a small spinner bait.
After about the second cast…..FISH ON!!! A decent pike was the first one to fall victim to my cold-handed retrieve. “ I think we may be on to something,” I said to Brent as I release our first catch of the day!
Brent quickly ties on a spinner bait and we went to work…..
Once we approached the bend at Big Pond, all hell broke loose! Rods started bending, and the bite was on!! Numerous fish came to hand this cold morning, too! Largemouth and Pike were staged up on beds in this shallow lake…. And they were hungry!
As the morning hours disappeared, so did the snow! It was starting to warm up and the fishing was fast and furious, to say the least. We brought in some large bass on this day, with some fish reaching 5 lbs. The pike were on the smaller side, but exciting nonetheless.
It’s days like this that make you realize that when you have the opportunity to do something outdoors, don’t let even a strong cold front like this one keep you from doing it. If we had called the day off we would have never had this day to remember. I, for one, am glad we held strong and stuck with our game plan. It days like this that forever change our idea of a “nice day on the water”!
But until next time, I just hope the weathermen could get a little closer on their predictions for a change!
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