"I seldom take a December trip without first making a scouting run," said Rich Haigh, a seasoned Northeast waterfowler. "I'll grab a cup of coffee and head down to the bay early in the morning before work. I sit in my warm truck and scan the sky and water with binoculars for at least a half-hour to see how many birds are around and where they're commuting. If the activity looks good, I'll plan a trip for the next wintry day. It makes the difference on whether or not I'm wasting my time and suffering needlessly on a hunt."

By scouting spots and finding ducks, you'll be able to set a smaller rig and fill your bag more quickly because birds having an established pattern don't need much convincing -- that's already where they want to congregate. You can chase them out when you arrive and wait for their predictable return, thereby minimizing your time and effort in the inclement weather. Or, better yet, set up quickly in the pre-dawn to be ready in the area where you expect them to move. Once you've filled your bag, pack up the rig and move out fast so as not to disturb the rest of the birds that will likely still work in during the morning.

RIGS FOR SMALL WATERS
If you hunt small waters, such as farm or timber ponds or backwater pockets in marshes, you have an advantage over hunters who gun over big, open waters because there's little chance the birds will land outside your decoy rig and out of range. But that doesn't necessarily mean you can succeed with just a half-dozen decoys. Using large spreads in small waters provides great visibility for drawing ducks from a distance, and it also allows you to arrange enough decoys in such a way as to funnel the birds to land where you want them.

A productive pond setup is a "U"-shaped" pattern with the open end of the U facing into the pond and bend of the U being closest to the blind. The wind should be at your back so the birds alight directly toward you and into the opening of the decoy pattern. A variation of this setup, depending on the geography and sun position, is to place the U's bend facing the opposite shore and into the wind. This will leave the opening toward you. The birds then cup in from behind and above and land with their backs facing the blind directly in front of the gunners.

Keeping your decoys in good shape is important, too. Be diligent about painting the decoys each season and concentrating on the bright colors and contrasts of the drakes to help draw attention to your rig. Gaudy mallard decoys should be your predominant species because most dabblers will set to them. Keep the ratio of drakes to hens high to emphasize the male color patterns. Mix in a few black duck decoys to boost contrast and confidence in a late-season spread.

When hunting on small water that's infested with stumps, broken by rocks, dotted with reed clumps or littered with ice chunks, try setting some magnum blocks. Regular-sized decoys can become "lost" on a surface cluttered with natural structure, and magnums will stand out. If you don't own enough oversized decoys for an entire spread, that's OK, you can mix them in with your standard-sized blocks.

HUNTING BIG WATER
Whether hunting on a lake, bay or sound, big water is a challenging place to set a decoy rig. Here, large numbers of decoys are important to draw birds from a distance and convince them to land in your spread rather than in one of the many other places that are available. Like pond shooting, it's important to keep bright colors and strong shades in your rig to catch the eyes of passing birds. Mallards, again, are ideal for this purpose. However, in big-water hunting, you also have a likelihood of divers, so be sure to set some scaup, goldeneyes, canvasbacks or other divers with strong black/white color contrasts.