Monday, January 21, 2013

A Whole Lot of Catchin' Going On

For starter, I probably ought to ackowledge that I'm not talking about myself. If you happened to read yesterday's blog you know that my 2013 fish tally catipulted from zero to a whopping two yesterday afternoon. Fish story deadlines, rain and family plans have pretty well kept me off the water for the first few weeks of the year. That will change soon, but that's a different subject.

Today's social media madness makes it pretty easy to see when folks are catching fish, and the bass fishermen really have started to light up the boards. Lots of pictures of big largmouths, smallmouths and spots from bass waters all over the place. Like the Oklahoma tournament catch that's believed to hae been the biggest ever brought to the scales in that state; the school of giants Timmy Horton found while filming Timmy Horton Outdoors on Lake Seminole; a bunch of big bass being caught from stops along the Alabama Bass Trail...

I've been sharing many of these on the Jeff Samsel Fishing Facebook page, so be sure to visit and to like the page!

Some of this is attributable cabin fever. The first sunny weekends of the new year draw a lot of fishermen to the lakes, and simple math says that more fishermen fishing typically leads to more fish being caught. I think it's more than that, though. Those same first sunny days trigger a bit of movement among the biggest bass in the lakes, and they get into a mode of trying to store up calories for the spawn. The fish and their forage are still winter-slowed and won't be out chasing food everywhere, but if you can put the right bait in the right place, it's a fine time to catch a very big bass.

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