THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502020148
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Tight Lines
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I suspect that anglers probably catch fewer fish in February than in any other month.
This may be the reason that many moods are not all that good right now, either.
In January, the fisherman is still glowing from the good surf fishing of the year past.
In March, he becomes ever wilder in anticipation of the fishing that is right around the corner.
But February is really winter.
Oh, there is some fishing this month, if you become truly desperate.
More than 25 years ago, I survived a few winters in the north, on the banks of Lake Erie. There, this is prime ice fishing season.
Yes, there really is such a thing. Otherwise sane people really do wander onto the frozen lake, cut a hole in the ice and drop a line into the water. A few of them even come home with a bucket of scrawny little fish, from time to time.
The favorite method where I lived was for a few people to pool their money, buy a junker for a hundred bucks, fill it with gas and drive it onto the ice.
Once the car was in place, some of the floor boards were removed and holes cut in the ice under the car.
When someone wanted to go ice fishing, he walked, or skated, out to the car.
With the car's heater running, you could sit on the plush old seat and ice fish in relative comfort. A bottle of brandy didn't hurt, either.
I don't remember catching a whole lot of fish through the ice, but maybe that wasn't the point anyway.
Unfortunately, many of the old cars didn't make it back to shore.
With each spring thaw, some of them would be lost.
For that reason, I think, they banned the practice when people finally began to get serious about cleaning up Lake Erie.
If freezing to death while not catching anything doesn't sound like much fun, you could go south and find some fish.
Just be sure that you go far enough south.
Some years ago, I spent a winter in Florida, thinking that I would be fishing twelve months of the year. I was sure that there would be something biting no matter when I decided to try my luck.
Unfortunately, it was the northern part of Florida.
It snowed three times where I was that February and I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.
It was, in fact, so nasty that I didn't even want to go fishing.
This year, I believe that I will stay home with my memories.
The next thing you know, the remaining 23 days of February will have passed and spring will be just weeks away. Not long after that, real fishing begins. by CNB