Thanksgiving Christmas & New Years, a sign Winter is on the way!
Capt. Reed Montgomery
November 25, 2017
Birmingham - Freshwater Fishing Report
Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Day, Are Always a Sign That Winter's On Its Way Written By Reed Montgomery
Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Years Day. These three holidays always come to mind as a reminder. Winter is on its way. Air temperatures slowly begin to drop, both during the day and at night, with each passing week. Our lake's water temperatures begin to plunge as well. Cooling with each passing week.
So, even if you just fish from the banks of these small ponds and lakes, a good hand held thermometer or water temperature gauge, is a very handy tool to keep on your tackle box, always quickly letting you know, on each visit to your favorite fishing hole!
* Bigger bodies of water such as natural lakes, man made lakes and impounded river systems, and even deeper, rock quarry type lakes, all take longer to cool.
By the end of November (around Thanksgiving Day), the bass of our lakes have emerged towards the shallows of these lakes and ponds, to feed and fatten up for the upcoming Winter season ahead.
This can be a slow, weekly trek, with their annual destiny aiming most bass towards the lake's shallow flats, and / or they can even be feeding around small shallow cuts and pockets, found along deep, rock bluffs, where some schools of bass their spent Fall and Summer seasons. Or it can typically be a whole school of bass traveling towards the mouths of major feeder creeks.
Then, as mid December lingers on and Christmas Day is in sight, anglers can target bass more towards the mid-to-far upper reaches (or dead ends), of major feeder creeks or incoming river systems.
Typically, with a normal, Winter season (if there is one), it can stay warm right up until Christmas Day. As anglers will often be seeing midday air temperatures in the low-to-mid 70's, right up until the end of the year! At least with Alabama weather! But then Winter arrives in full force. Cold fronts increase and warm days decrease.
Right after New Years Day (the two coldest months of the entire year, January and February), can display night time air temps in the "teens" with daytime highs often staying in the forties for a week or more! This can also be the time to see snow, sleet, iced over boat ramps, or even the edges of our many lakes and ponds (along the shoreline), displaying thin sheets of ice!
Water temperatures can even drop into the low forties, or worse yet, into the upper thirties, when most bass become completely dormant and they will be eating very little. It's also the time when it's just to cold to go fishing, often for weeks at a time! Cabin fever they call it.
So the point here is simple…now is the time to plan, an end-of- the year fishing trip!
Or, you can always call (205) 663-1504 on Reeds Guide Service, located near Birmingham, "Alabama's oldest professional bass fishing only guide service" guiding on all of Alabama's lakes for over 50 years!
Want to learn more about fishing Alabama's lakes?
See my website www.fishingalabama.com and like us (Reeds Guide Service), on face book too! Seasonal fishing tips, lure information and suggestions for each Alabama lake, fishing articles, pictures of clients with big small mouth bass, spotted bass, largemouth bass and striped bass. Including links to major fishing related websites, information about my guide service, and monthly, updated fishing articles, upcoming events such as boat shows, bass tournaments and fishing reports, for all of Alabama's lakes!
*Also, these guided fishing trips (with Reed Montgomery, owner of Reeds Guide Service), to any lake in Alabama, make great Christmas Gifts! A mailed in $100 gift certificate is good for an entire year, from the date of purchase. Just go to the bottom of my website www.fishingalabama.com on the home page and you will see at the page bottom my e-mail me, for more guide service gift certificate info!
Small ponds (those of only a few acres or more), are notoriously known to, "heat up quickly" during the summer season, and these ponds are the first bodies of water to cool down as well, as winter arrives.
During the latter part of the Fall and early Winter season, these smaller lakes and ponds will begin to cool down rapidly (often very quickly with unseasonably cool weather), and the smaller these ponds are, the faster the anglers that fish them, will see water temperatures quickly drop.
Birmingham Fishing Forecast:
Daytime air temps in the mid 60's, mid forties at night, partly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of rain Wednesday and Thursday.
Target Species:
largemoth bass, spotted bass and smallmouth bass
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