Probably the water I loathe fishing in the most is when it's both cold and muddy. Yesterday (2-14), South Twin was both. I launched the boat at noon at the south end of the dam, and found the water to be 49° and brown. Ten feet from shore, it dropped to 47° - still brown. Fishing everywhere except the NW shore, I found water temps ranging from 44° to 53°. The warmest water was in the creek where the big pads were last year. Visibility everywhere I went was limited to about 12". Cody ranch has had some rain lately, and I think the runoff is more the source of the colored water than the cattle that were wading in the shallow end. (I have no idea what the ranch's other lakes were like, but I'd guess they're also cold and colored.) I fished mostly plastics, jigs with pork and plastic trailers, a squarebill,  a T-rigged creature bait, a wacky-rigged worm, and a jerkbait. I slow-rolled a single-spin, and even a slow buzz bait. Not even a bump until about 3:15, when I missed a good pickup on an 8" junebug lizard in brush on the edge of the old creek channel in 6' of 47° water (because I was so surprised I didn't set the hook in time). Finally, at 3:42 p.m., I boated my first bass of the day. It was 16" long and weighed 3 pounds even. It hit that same plastic lizard in 4 feet of 49° water. I had cast tight against the east side of a thorny tree, and the fish picked up the lizard on its initial fall. My very next cast, up agains the opposite side of the same tree with a new junebug 8" lizard, was also picked up on its initial drop. At 3:44 p.m, that 20" fish turned out to be a 5-02 on my Boga. I fished that same area hard, but had no additional hits until I stopped fishing around 5:00. The fish should have been fat this time of year, but neither of them hardly had a belly at all. They didn't look anything at all like the big "fatties" I caught there last fall. The 3-pounder should have weighed around 4 to 4.5, and the big one should have been over six. I wonder why.

There are absolutely no pads left on the lake, either the small ones around the south end of the lake or the big ones that Mr. Cody sprayed last year. At the north end, tere are still some dead stems above the surface, but they're not thick. At the south end of the lake, none of the stems reach the surface. Most of the timber I fished was coated with that slimy "snot grass" stuff we all dislike so much. All things considered, I realize that I was "rushing the season" a bit. It's getting cold again tomorrow, so I wanted to get in at least an afternoon of fishing during the last of the nice weather we've been having. Now I'm going to have a hard time waiting for warm water. Dang.

If my iPhone photos ever come in, I'll post some here.