Access to these blinds is exclusively by boat. Based on prevailing water levels, public access may be used, but your scouting should include an adequate place to launch. Many overpasses and side roads will allow access to remote regions of the northern section of Reelfoot, as well as the possibility of some public access. Walking in or wading in to permanent blinds is not feasible.

"Up until this past season when ice storms made a complete mess of the west side of the lake, there was some of the best walk-in hunting you could ask for," said Brown. "Some of these little open-water areas in the timber held a lot of ducks and very few people took advantage of them. Now, with all the trees and limbs down in the state woods, access is all but impossible."

Brown discourages hunters from attempting to free-lance hunt from boat blinds in areas where permanent blinds already exist.

"Reelfoot has 45 to 50 draw blinds, plus around 140 permanent registered blinds," he said. "These blinds are already located in the best spots on the lake and the law says you have to be at least 200 yards away to hunt. That's still going to put you too close to hunt when someone else is in that blind and you're not going to be in the right place to hunt ducks coming to that area anyway."

For weekend-only duck hunters, Brown suggests setting up on the south end of Reelfoot along the shoreline of a long point sticking out into open water. By bringing along a string of 12 to 15 diver decoys, hunters can have a decent hunt for diver ducks -- ringnecks, redheads and bluebills. Though not as consistent as the other end of the lake, there are even days when a hunter may be able to get a limit of puddle ducks that straggle by.

"The diver duck hunting often gets overlooked," said Brown, "but hunters need to be careful as the open water can get pretty rough on that end of Reelfoot in a hurry."

Access to the south end of the lake is available by launching boats from a number of public ramps, including Reelfoot State Park.

Reelfoot Lake is not, of course, the only public land with good duck hunting in this part of the state. Dan Fuqua is the wildlife manager for Northeast Region I.

"Each area has its own merits and each hunter has his own ideas of what is the best duck hunting," he said. "We have areas that are usually planted in crops and flooded, such as Camden, Barkley, Big Sandy and Gooch. These areas have draw blinds, and I'd recommend hunting from the blinds on most of these WMAs to be successful.

"Then we have areas that are natural food source areas, such as Reelfoot, Tigrett, West Sandy and White Oak. Some are walk-in and some need boats. Most areas have multiple accesses. Some have timber hunting that are dependent on high water to bring the ducks in."

Fuqua suggests the best thing to do is to check out these areas in a given season and then decide how you want to hunt the following season.