Woke up to over an inch of snow on the ground, in Mobile, AL, that just about unheard of in December!
First time I have ever left the driveway with snow on the boat.
Temps bottomed out around 28 but the roads were still above freezing, so no black ice to worry about.
Winds were still around 25kts on open water, so going down to MS Sound was out of the question.
Headed to northern Mobile Bay, where things were more sheltered and a lot calmer.
Set up a little deeper than usual but the tide wasn't going to bottom out until 1pm and the north wind was going to make it lower than normal.
Put a wad of cans, redheads and bluebills on the south side of the boat and about 2 dzn gadwalls on the east side.
Beautiful chilly sunrise. Lots of shooting to my west, in shallower water, but it took a while for me to get my first bird, a nice drake mottled duck around 7:30.
Just short time later a diver dropped into the gadwall decoys, turned out to be a greated scaup. Nice fat juvenile drake.
Missed a gadwall that came in high, probably shoulda let him work.
Around 8:15, a lone big diver came in from the south and made a high banking turn over the west side of the boat. He came over so fast I didnt shoot. Saw that it was a big drake redhead. He went over my head, headed east about 80 yards and made a wide banking turn and came straight back into the decoys. I was watching him the whole time. He was feet down coming into my diver decoys. As I rose to shoot, I noticed another diver swimming in the decoys, must have came in while i was watching the RH! I dropped the redhead drake and swung over and killed the second bird with my second shot. Another juvenile drake greater scaup.
After that it slowed down, had hen buffy come buzzing in and added her to the bag. A little while later a few more hen buffies came in but I let them swim off. Nothing flying and I was ready to go, so I packed it in around 9am.
Didn't see as many ducks as I expected after this front but still a great morning. With all this cold weather, next weekend should be another good one.