February ends and March is set to begin. Hooray!

The good news is that spring will begin on the 19th of the month with the passing of the vernal equinox.

At least in theory — according to what the official seasonal checkpoints on our calendars and almanacs optimistically claim. Of course, we all know you can’t schedule seasons or pin them down.

Moreover, we mustn’t forget March is a transitional month, spanning that restless period when winter ends and spring begins. Like all transitional months, it’s moody, tempestuous, and unpredictable.

Will this year’s version of March live up to its old “in like a lion, out like a lamb” proverb? Or contrarily, switch things around — starting off as if it were already spring, but finishing as if we’re heading back into winter?

March iterations often unfold in a frantic vacillation — a kinetic to-and-fro dithering between the seasons. Sunny and balmy one day, gloomy and cold the next, with rain, sleet…even snow!

“In March, a fellow can get frostbit and sunburned the same week!” my ol’ fishing buddy Frank once said.

I’d modify his statement to say both can happen in a single day!

On more than one occasion, I’ve been caught out unprepared for March’s fickle about-face weather. What began as a gloriously sunny and shirt-sleeve warm March morning suddenly starts to cloud up. The sky turns dark. A mild southerly breeze shifts around to the north; winds increase dramatically.

Within a half hour, the temperature drops 30 degrees! It starts misting, rains awhile — then the rain turns to sleet or snow!

Bad enough, but worse because I’m sorely underdressed for such a dramatic weather shift. Coat, gloves, and warm headgear are back in the car, a mile distant.

I try to tough it out. Soon, my teeth start to chatter. Then my blood starts to congeal and my spine gets replaced by an icicle. I wuss out and begin a hasty, desperate retreat — barely able to survive my foolish lack of preparedness.

Obviously, I should know better. I have decades of experience with March’s fickle weather. But the truth is, I’ve blissfully ignored its swift volatility and paid the price more times than I care to admit.

In my half-hearted defense, these weather misadventures typically occur during the month’s latter weeks. I do know better than to trust the capriciousness of early March!

Most years, March’s initial days are blustery — cold and windy. Snow isn’t unusual. Winter outerwear is still regularly needed.

However, by the month’s end, a new, more benign vernal look and feel envelops the land. It’s breezy, good kite-flying weather, warmer, the air mild. A light jacket is sufficient.

Green patches spread, early flowers bloom. Birds are tuning up, singing loud, from dawn until dusk. Everywhere you go you see, smell, and hear countless unmistakable intimations of spring!

At least that’s the standard drill, the familiar show we annually anticipate. Yet it’s always prudent to keep in mind that such expectations are not a precise, done-deal guarantee.

Still, arriving March often awakens a personal routine.

My mother longed for spring. Whenever March served up its first pretty day, lured by the sunshine’s bright gleam, she’d head out to the side yard. Along the south-facing wall, she scrutinized the dark earth of her most weather-protected flower beds, in hopes of spotting an emerging jonquil or crocus bloom.

But Mom never looked for those soul-cheering and beloved first flowers until March began and sanctioned her per-season routine.

My father’s routine March reaction involved fishing.

A day or two after flipping the page of the big Currier and Ives wall calendar to the third month, Dad would head into the basement and collect our fishing gear. Then he’d tell me to bundle up.

“Let’s go dig some worms somewhere,” he’d say, giving me a wink and grin. “We’ll see if the suckers are biting in the riffles.”

If the suckers were indeed biting, I knew it was a sure bet the bullheads would be, too. Since I much preferred catching — and eating — bullheads. So, I usually tried to sway him into changing targets.

But my persuasion attempts were only halfhearted, lacking both enthusiasm and conviction.

Truth be told, when you’ve not been fishing for many long months, quibbling over the trip’s intended prey was irrelevant. Getting out — going and doing — was what mattered!

Besides, Dad always needed that one early March sucker-fishing fix — it was apparently something he had to get out of his system. And suckers are plenty of fun to catch after a fishless winter.

I haven’t fished specifically for suckers in several years. But having again endured too many fishless winter weeks, I might give the suckers in the big riffle in front of the cottage a try.

If they’re not in the mood, I’ll move my piscatorial operations a few yards downstream to the big pool and the gravel-bottomed channel below.

I’m still as avid a bullhead fan as ever — and bullheads will always cooperate!

Reach Jim McGuire at [email protected].