Photo by Tom Evans

With the midmorning sun finally beginning to warm the icy late-winter air, the boat slows as it nears the point. The man in back cuts the engine, and all's quiet again -- except for the thud of the trolling motor being lowered into the water by the fellow in front.

The boat moves deliberately on toward the point, finally getting too close for the geese sunning there. Squawking in complaint, half of them swim off to the left -- but the others take flight to the right, only to circle back and land near the rear of the cove into which the boat's now turning.

As the geese splash down and begin paddling around, the big mama bass that lives in the cove grows even more irritable. She's fat, swollen with eggs growing inside her for the coming spawn. In a few days, when it's a little bit warmer, she'll move to the rocky point on which the geese had been sunning and set to reproducing her kind. But for now, quietly settled in her protected sanctuary between the dock posts and old stumps on the lakebed, she just wants to rest.

She's not even hungry this morning, thanks to the pleasant surprise of the big supper that she made of a wounded crappie just at sunset the day. Though good eating, crappie are usually too hard to catch. But the stunned fish suddenly splashed into the water right in front of her, just as one of those boats that will sometimes invade her cove moved past. She didn't know that an angler had caught it but decided to throw it back; she just knew that it was a meal too good to pass up.

Having rested all night and through the early morning, she'll be quite content to carry on lazing in the water -- if only those pesky geese will go away and stop splashing.

There they go, taking flight again. Good; they usually swim around longer than that. Now here comes another boat, that little whirling thing thrumming in the water.

There's a splash; something's sinking down nearby. Maybe it's food? Here it comes, right in front of her. Though not hungry, she reflexively sucks it in just to get rid of it.

Sudden pressure sends the mama bass struggling to get under the nearby dock. But instead, she's quickly headed for the surface.

"Hey, Charlie! That's a good one! Let me get the net. That is a nice bass!"

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February's great for bass fishing in Middle Georgia. The worst of winter's past, the days are warming, and the largemouths are getting ready to spawn. With a little luck, your experience may match that of the anglers in our opening fantasy!

Three wonderful options are to be found less than an hour's drive away from most Middle Georgians to try to land such a lunker: lakes Tobesofkee, Juliette and High Falls. Let's take a look at each.