Small state lakes provide protection from wind.
Fishing reports throughout Mississippi have been about as consistent as the weather, and the only predictable thing about the conditions is that they are constantly changing.
Frequent and strong storms, gale winds, bright sun, unseasonable warmth and frosty mornings — you name it, and we’ve seen it.
Oh, and did we mention serious winds?“My Lord, has it ever been a windy February,” said Grenada’s Phillip Johnson, a frequent crappie fisherman at both Grenada and Enid lakes. “There were a couple of days I thought about hooking my boat up to my truck just to keep the boat from blowing out of the yard.”
Johnson was joking, but his point was made.
“These lakes are tough enough to fish in 10-mph winds, and we’ve seen a few days when it was a steady 25 with gusts to 30 and 35,” he said. “And that has been in the last week.”
What it has done is make tracking fish difficult.
“We haven’t been able to stay on the lake enough to follow the fish at a time of the year when they are starting to move pretty good,” Johnson said “I’m chasing crappie, but my bass-fishing buddies tell me the same thing.
“It’s just been a tough week.”
The rivers, big lakes and reservoirs have been impossible to fish, not only because of strong winds but also because heavy rains have increased current and left them extremely muddy.
The conditions have put the focus of attention on smaller lakes, where winds can’t whip up a lot of waves and where fishermen can find some protected waters.
“I fished at Barnett Reservoir one day this week, and it was really, really slow,” said B.A.S.S. Elite Series pro Pete Ponds of Madison. “It was difficult to find any decent water, and the current was strong. Winds made it even harder to find water you could fish.
“But over the next few days, I went to some smaller private lakes, and the water was pretty and even though it was seriously windy, we were able to find good water and we caught fish both deep and shallow. And the temperatures were a lot higher than I figured, some in the mid 50s.”
Fishing reports from the smaller lakes, including those managed in the state lake system by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries & Parks, have been the best in recent weeks (see the reports at mdwfp.com). The U.S. Forest Service lakes, like Davis and Okhissa, also are worth a trip.
“We were on Davis Lake late last week setting nets for walleye for brood stock at the hatchery, and there were two guys in a boat fishing for bass in deep water,” said Ron Garavelli, chief of fisheries for the MDWFP. “They caught two bass over 10 pounds in about two hours.”
Garavelli pointed out that many of his agencies lakes have reported similar fish.
“You look at the reports online and you will find that Calling Panther, Bill Waller and several other lakes have reported big fish in the last week,” he said.
With only a month of prespawn left, the big female bass are moving along the edges of deep water and feeding like crazy to build their bodies for the coming spawn. Ponds said the fish will stay near deep water but will be quick to take advantage of any warm conditions presented.
“They will go shallow in a heartbeat, if the conditions are right, and we’ve already seen that,” he said. “With surface temperatures in the mid 50s, we’ve found fish in a foot or 2 of water on several occasions in a few of the smaller lakes that I fish.
“Here’s something I found that will help fishermen: When we moved up and found fish shallow, we were aggressive. We caught fish on shallow crankbaits like a Bandit Flat Maxx and even on a Rat-L-Trap.
‘They were hungry, and there was no reason to fish slow.”
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