Name:   Mountain Man - Subject:   Spring is coming Date:   2/9/2014 12:04:04 PM

Saturday morning was a dandy with 60 degrees, sunshine and no wind. We scouted from Kowaliga to Needle Eye looking for a 'lost tribe' of stripes and had several large, solitary marks that may have been line sides. At one point a medium heavy Ugly Stik bent double but the fish was gone before we could grab the rod. Maybe a stripe, maybe not. We'll likely have to wait until May for them to start showing up around Big Kowaliga in good numbers.

The water was stained to varying degrees with Oakachoy being the worst of it. Parker Creek was better. Water temps were 46-48 degrees and we did note some dead shad on top most likely due to those extremely low temperatures. However, deeper water was holding some good size bait schools and we did manage to land a couple nice (2.5-3#) spots mid-morning. One observation we noted was that whenever we were in areas with less that 25' of water depth, there were almost no marks on the Lowrance. Everything we saw was down around 30', bait included.

There was a tournament going on, but I can't tell you how the bank beaters were doing other than to say that they sure were burning a lot of gas. ;0)

Good luck out there and let's hope that we've seen the last of the really cold weather.

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