The second quarter of the year has finally been achieved and we are saying goodbye to the first three months.

It doesn’t seem to have passed as quickly as time has been the last few years, but as we get on into the warmer months the time will pass quickly and we will find ourselves in the hot of summer before we know it. I am sure than we are going to get hot early this year, so you best had prepare yourselves for it and I’ll tell you why.

Each year my brother would come down here from New York in August. Usually that is about as hot a month as we will have. His wife and daughter couldn’t stand the heat so they didn’t come much. He and his son did and the son loved it here in the Deep South.

Last year he decided to come in May with his son and daughter and May turned out to be a really hot month. If he had come in August maybe he could have avoided the accident that ended up taking his life. The reason I say April is going to be hot is his daughter is planning on coming down in April this year. In two weeks or so, so make plans to cool yourself as I am sure that they will be bringing the heat to our little part of the Deep South.

Besides getting to see her and her children this month, which alone would make it a good month, next week is the full moon for this month of April. You remember the few days prior to the full moon and the few days after the full moon are supposed to be good enough that anyone can catch fish regardless of their ability with a reel or pole or boat.

Folks have already been catching some decent-sized shellcracker and bream, though less bream than shellcracker. Toward the end of the month, and especially the full moon in May, that will change as the bream will hold their own with the shellcracker, or redear sunfish as the state publications refer to them. Maybe the panfish bedding season will be better that the crappie bedding season.

I don’t crappie fish all that much and throw back all I catch as I really don’t like the taste. There are plenty of folks that do like to eat them and the numbers that live in our part of the world should be enough to fill those folks for years to come.

I have been told that they raise little ones very easily and raise a lot of them each year. This year has been a little different.

Cold weather came back in about the time that the big bedding should have taken place and the fish moved back to deeper water in a lot of places. I am sure that some eggs were dropped and some young were hatched, but most probably not what most of the fishermen had expected and hoped for. If you want to catch a fish, go fishing. It works more often that way than staying home.

It will be time to put that 14-foot graphite pole to use here in a few days. It is better to use the longer poles shellcracker fishing as they are easier to spook than is a bream.

The farther away from the bed, or fish, that you are the less likely you will spook the shellcracker.

Places like Merritt’s Mill Pond down at Marianna, Fla., you would have to use a long pole or a rod and reel combo because the water is so clear that the fish will see you and not take your offering.

A cloudy day is the very best time to fish the really clear water for those bedding shellcracker. Even though bream may be a little harder to spook, they to are easier to catch if you stay away from the bed and fish clear water on cloudy days. You can get lucky, and many folks do, and get a good stringer of fish on clear day from some mighty clear water. But the other way will keep you stomach full more times than not.

Turkey season is getting into full swing.

Several reported kills so far and the largest I have heard of weighed in at 22 pounds. Nowadays that is a pretty nice bird. When I was a kid I saw birds that weighed over 25 pounds and on up to 28 pounds. There is too much pressure on them to be able to get that big now.

A group of protected birds might have a chance, but that would be about the only way in south Georgia.