Bass do bite in cold water this time of year, if you are at the right place at the right time, and have a bit of good luck. Two trips last week reinforced this idea to me. Last Sunday the Flint River Bass Club fished our January tournament at Jackson and I went to Lanier on Wednesday to get information for my February Georgia Outdoor News Map of the Month article.

The trip to Lanier accomplished two goals. I got my information for the article, but also got Jim “LJ” Harmon to work on the electronics in my boat. LJ is a Humminbird Electronics guru, using them to find deep bass at Lanier, but he also wires and sets up new units, and goes out on the water with folks to fine tune their units.

Last November LJ went out with me for an hour or so and had my units reading better than I had been able to do in a year of messing with the controls. This problem was with power. The two units on the front of my boat pull a lot of power. They were hooked up through the wiring harness for the boat and went dead sometimes when I cranked the motor.

Even worse, they picked up interference when the trolling motor was on, making it hard to read them. LJ ran new wires for them directly to the battery. He fussed at me, saying “you have more crap in this boat than a Jiffy John!” But he got it done, even in the messy weather.

While LJ worked on my boat I went out with Jim Farmer to fish. Jim hand paints crankbaits and is an expert on catching Lanier spots on them. The weather was messy but much warmer than it had been. And the places we fished are for February, so it is still early for them, but we caught some nice fish.