So far, January has offered us some fine weather for fishing. It feels more like early spring than winter.

Fish activity has really picked up on some area lakes. Surface water temperatures range from 51 to 54 degrees. Lake Bruin draws the most attention from the local cold water anglers, and for good reason. This 3,000-acre landlocked Mississippi River oxbow lake in Tensas Parish offers a lot of deep-water opportunities, as well as plenty of shallow cover that hosts a good population of bass, sac-a-lait, bream and catfish.

Most of the attention in January is directed toward the largemouth bass. Last weekend, we fished Lake Bruin with the Miss-Lou bass club. Due to a fall drawdown and not much rain since, the water level is still about 2 feet lower than normal.

That’s not a bad thing on Lake Bruin. The lake is lined from end to end with shallow- and deep-water piers, numerous cypress trees and deep-water ledges.

The January pattern for bass has remained the same in the 36 years I have fished this lake. You can find a number of smaller bass in the shallows along with an occasional 5- to 6-pound fish, and you can catch fish as deep as 28 feet. During the tournament last weekend, I reached three or four five-bass tournament limits by fishing the shallows, but I did not find the big fish until late in the day, and they were deep — really deep.

My two largest bass weighed 4.30 and 3.80 pounds, and both came from 27 feet of water. Those two fish were not suspended like most deep fish are. They were holding tight to the bottom under a huge school of shad. Without a good sonar unit, there was no way to I would have caught those two fish and placed third in the event.

I saw the shad and the bass on the sonar before I caught them. Gary Crane of Denham Springs stayed with a shallow pattern to win the tournament with five bass weighing 17.83 pounds, and Crane had the single largest bass of the day, a rare 6.13 largemouth. John Bruce of Vidalia placed second by fishing shallow and deep water with a limit weighing 16.69 pounds.

I landed the final cash place with third at 16.06. That was a fun day. No matter if you win one these tournaments or not, when you catch 20 bass, it makes for a fun day.

Saturday, we were back on Lake Bruin fishing with the Concordia Bass Club. I’ll have the results of that event in next week’s column.

Jigs, jigging spoons and Terry Bowden’s Cold Steel skirted shaky-head jig with a straight tail plastic worm trailer produced most of the winning fish. The attack on Lake Bruin will continue as the 26th J.R. Roberts Memorial Team Bass Challenge draws closer.

This long-running event will be on Lake Bruin Feb. 4. You can enter the memorial from now through Feb. 3 at Eddie’s Marine in Vidalia.