Pretty Day but No Fish.... Febuary 8th, 2015

Warm air temps, clear sunny skies with cold clear water running a little lower than normal made for a really tough day of winter fishing. The air temps made it to 67 degrees but the water never got any higher than 37 degrees. John and I fished for 4 hour out of his G3 river jet between lower Shanklin's all the way down to just above Harvey Falls at Cedar Branch. I had one maybe bite that after I reeled in had a bass scale on it, but other than that it was slow hard fishing. We tried tubes, jerk baits, jig and pig, creature baits and spider jigs all with no takers. Winter fishing has been tough this year.

One Dying Shad.....Febuary 7th, 2015

Greg and I gave crappie fishing on a still partially iced over bluestone lake today. The air temps were nice around 40 degrees or more but the night before had gotten into the teens and there was still a lot of ice on the lake. We tried drop shotting crawlers for 4 hours without getting a single bite. There were four other boat on the lake and I never saw anybody else catch a fish. I even talked to two of them who said they were having no luck. We stopped crappie fishing and threw a musky lure and jerk bait for about an hour after it was apparent that despite the warm day time air temps the falling water temps had the fish in a negative to shut down mood. The only fish I saw all day was a dying shad kicking around on the surface of the water. He was around 8 inches long.

No Hits, Runs, or Errors - January 31st, 2015

John and I headed out on the New river in his jet boat on a balmy 20 degree day. We fished pretty hard with hair jigs, tubes and spider jigs without a single bite for either of us in 5 or so hours of fishing. The air did finally warm up into the 30's. The water was lower but stable. We were up against the dreaded high skies, which never seen to work well for me and bass fishing. Back to the drawing board for winter smallie fishing.

Red Fox Almost - January 30th, 2015

Derrick and I went out predator calling on a cold and windy night. The temp was only around 18 degrees with enough wind in places to be really cold. The leftover snow was really crunchy and loud. Sneaking from set to set was really difficult. The moon was really bright and they sky was really clear. So bright in fact that you could see without a light for a pretty good distance. The first set we came to a red fox came in at minute 4. I had the .222 with cross sticks and Derrick shotgun. The red fox came in to about 125 yards and hung up in a little patch of brush just in the field. He was sitting on his butt looking at our decoy. He did not seem nervous at all. I looked at him and felt the shot with the brush was 50/50. My rest was solid, he was sitting still, but the brush was the wild card. I started to take the shot twice but I really felt like he would come on in and give me a clearer closer shot. After about 2 minutes of sitting there listening and looking he got up and turned around and walked away. I changed the call 3 times and even tried the fox pup distress, but he would not come back. He had the wind so our scent may have gotten to him. We did 3 more sets. On our third set we saw and eye coming in but it never came in to give us a look. I really fell like the ultra bright moon made them more spooky and less likely to come in than normal. It also made our red lights significantly less powerful. Even with the moon, wind, and crunchy snow we almost closed the deal.