Canada is well known for it's winters with plenty of ice and snow. In fact a running joke used to be that some less informed tourists (obviously pre-Net) from the southern US would arrive at the border each July with snow-skis atop their tire-chained cars. No doubt Jeff Foxworthy's relatives.

It's safe to say that the relationship between Americans and Canadians has warmed up over the years, but the same cannot be said for our weather. Even in the fall (i.e. October), it is not uncommon for ice and snow to hamper the efforts of even the most dedicated anglers. This weather is known to produce trophy muskies, but is not normally associated with bass.

The traditional theory is that when the lakes turn over and cold fronts hit, the bass have pretty well finished their early fall feeding frenzy, and have settled into more of a scattered pattern, suspended in deeper water where the decay of the weeds has not yet exhausted the oxygen supply. I beg to differ.

Bass will shy away from the oxygen-poor weed flats, but there are other natural phenomena that may preclude them from drifting off into never-never water. For a few years now, I have fished both Georgian Bay and lakes further north in the middle of October, and have found the fishing great. Not the weather, which has averaged between -5 and 5 Celsius, or 20 to 45 Fahrenheit, with biting, northerly winds, but definitely the fishing.