It is September, and we have two hunting seasons in.

Dove came in on the fifth and archery season will make its appearance on the 12th. That is going to be it for this month, but October has a couple more deer seasons and another dove season. Things are beginning to shape up and take place as we slowly move into the fall seasons. A little slow in coming, but rewarding when it finally gets here.

You know we have gotten a fair amount of rainfall looking at the last of August and the first of September. The Hooch in Columbus had spots in the river there in town that was so low that grass and weeds had grown almost half way across the river bottom, and the dirt was dry, not boggy. The same way below the Highway 26 bridge between Montezuma and Oglethrope. A lot of exposed river bottom there.

Last week I was through both places and both rivers had way more water in them and was flowing good. The Hooch in Columbus has deep water close to the shallow and dry spots, but the Flint near Montezuma is very shallow for miles. Any fish there would have had to go downstream toward Lake Blackshear just to survive. It may be next spring or summer before we know the extent of what this has done to the fish in that part of the Flint River.

With the rain and moisture in the air, it is a wonder that we have not gotten a hurricane. One storm did pass fairly close to us and went across the Panhandle of Florida and up into Alabama. A little farther east and we would have gotten much more rainfall and maybe a little wind. We lucked out on that and so far the rest of the Atlantic storms have steered clear of southwest Georgia.

Most probably it is the way the fronts have been coming from the northwest and have been pushing the Atlantic storms on up the east coast rather than letting them move into the southeastern United States. I am sure some folks would have preferred the rain, but the farmers have been gathering crops and they don’t want the rain to slow the harvest.

This past week I went to a meeting expecting to see the new rods and reels for 2010. I didn’t see anything. Some pictures and listened to what the factories are going to introduce in January. January is a little late as most folks still spend money on rods, reels and poles at Christmas. January makes it a little late for the Christmas-giving season. Most of the new products for 2010 will be of the higher quality and higher price end of the fishing rod and reel goods. They didn’t mention anything that was cheap, so you had best save your money.

Pure Fishing, which is Berkley fishing products several years ago bought the Stren line folks out and now Stren line is made and shipped by the same folks that make and ship Trilene line. They also bought the Garcia reel and rod folks out.

A year or so ago they bought Penn Fishing, which is a big salt water company. Behind that they bought Shakespeare, Pflueger and All Star. They and Pradco seem to want to own everything in the fishing world. They are both doing a good job of it so far. One disappointing thing for next year, there will be no Pflueger rods. They say that they have plenty of rods without them. There are a number of local fishermen that will not like hearing that news. Sorry about that, Kyle.