I was out last weekend and saw those birds working. The shad were so thick I hooked 2 by accident reeling in. No fish under them, just big balls of shad.

I also went up the river last Friday to do some scouting, you are right, they are not there yet.

Thanks for the scouting report, Gene! I blame the fish catching mochines, father and son, Ray and Terry. They caught all the fish!!!

I went out tuesday eve. .I changed area of lake that I had been hangin in .finnally got some sandies to bite ,I changed from big hyb. bait to a 1/4 oz. crappie jig and did pretty good .Didn't get any hybs but just enjoyed getting a bite on Hubbard.After that cold spell last week the birds were loving life on hub. the 3"shad were dieing off.I watched shad just float to the top and a bird would come and get it.The fish are hangin pretty deep 28'plus.A slow lift or small twich did the trick.

i will be on the lake regualar here in a couple of weeks until then i can not comment on where the fish are but i will be willing to bet they are in the water somewhere in north texas.

IN THE WATER??????
Jason where has you been?

This has been my worst fall and winter on Hubbard in years... somebody said it was because the EL NINO' system sounds good to me

I think it is because of the down economy. The fish can't afford to bite

"EL"
Thats funny!

My experience has been they will hang in the 30-40 ft flats until the water gets into the low to mid 50's, then all heck breaks loose in the afternoons. This will continue for a month or so as fish stage to run up the creeks. Most of the fish will feed on ledges or humps along the river channels with the birds showing the way. Last year it started in January but last year wasn't as cold. I may give it a try on Sunday...it should not be long.

The water temps are actually 5-6 degrees warmer now then they were this time last year, due to the very warm spell we had. The surface temps should drop with this cold rain/temps and will finally push the colder temps to the deepest portions of the lakes. This will slow the metabolism in the fish even more, shutting them down until the return of warmer surface temps. The sandies and hibbies will retreat to the warmer waters flowing from the creeks and rivers, which a lot of anglers are excitied about and there is always catfishing!

You can't just look at surface temps on a specific day in a 40 ft lake. I did a quick search and the avg high temp for Dec 08 and Jan 09 compared to Dec 09 and Jan 10.
Dec. 08 Avg High -59 low -36 ...Jan 09 Avg High 60 Low 36
Dec. 09 Avg High -51 Low -35...Jan 10 Avg High 54 Low 37

As you can see last year was much warmer than this year for those two months. That being said, the fish were a lot more active earlier last year than this year due to CONSTANT warmer surface temps. It will start in the next week or so when the temps rise again.

I apologize, I wasn't disagreeing with you and yes, I know you can't judge the surface temperature of any body of water of significant size, by a single day or even a week. I was simply stating the obvious. The temps we should all be most concerned with are those temps down deep. Once the extreme cold temps penetrate to the depths, the fishing will shut down for a while. Then we'll get the surface warming from spring weather and we'll be back to square one and fish on

That is, if the rain stops for a few months