It takes more than a 16-inch Clincher softball

Minnesota's Lake Minnetonka is said to have a mind and personality of its own.

With all its mystical charm, quite a few locals - after a ritual of consuming a half-dozen steins of beer - will swear the lake's ice covering always disappears by April 15.

But this year is a different main-course item on a fisherman's menu. A blast. Winter weather has shaken the faith of those codgers who claim to know the score.

Now to Chicago and the hoards of eager fishermen whose tongues have been hanging out of their mouths for weeks.

We've hung on every word those in the two-piece, pinstripe suits throw out there every night after showing us what the "European Model" looks like.

The Fox River walleyes really don't pay attention to his words but rather the warming of the water into the mikd-40s just right for the larger females to make their way to the McHenry Dam and start their spawning ritual.

The phrasing and "forecasting" often is scribed on a teleprompter so the reader can appear to be knowledgeable enough to justify his or her paycheck.

You and I have rummaged through our corrosion-laden tackle boxes, hoping to make sure we have every lure imaginable to catch any fish that happen to swim by.

The muskies are cruising in circles on Lake Catherine. Their impatience is displayed by the frenzy they created with baitfish. Those brutes wait for those weather readers to stop screaming "the sky is falling" while their fellow game fish, bass and walleye lie in waiting for the waves of warmth to roll over them.

For years I've been told the readers of the weather patterns went to this and that school to learn their craft, and they haven't learned how not to call Armitage "armitaaaage."

So I headed 250 miles southward where the clouds are white and puffy and the rain brings with it air temperatures conducive to excellent crappie and largemouth fishing.

The biscuits-and-gravy is more than enough to make for a substantial breakfast, with plenty of fuel to keep me hauling in a few dozen large channel catfish.

Later, when I put the filet knife to the 14-inch crappie, I ask myself why I still live up north where it's dangerous to walk †he boulevards at night.

I also ask if those weather geniuses really know what 16-inch softball is about and one can break a finger or two on a park district ball field?

• Contact Mike Jackson at angler88@comcast.net, catch his radio show 7-9 a.m. Sundays on WGCO 1590-AM (live-streamed at www.1590WCGO.com) and get more content at www.mikejacksonoutdoors.com.