Early season spread question?

[Lybeck]

ok heres the pond

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/8267/jimmyspondyi9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Shot at 2007-07-31

my questions are for teal pintail and shovelers should I only use hen decoys or both hen and drake decoys?

whats a good mallard drake to hen ratio?

and whats a good n number of decoys to use when there aren't too awful many birds around?

[Wesley Hamm]

Find some birds in your area and watch them, take notes as to how they are acting, setup together, how much color you can see in the groups from a distance, size of groups,when birds come into them where how do they work them and where do they tend to land, etc.

keep these notes in a yearly book so you can look back upon them through the years.

then copy what you see. But most importantly make sure your hidden extremely well and make your hunt area look as natural as possible from every angle because if it looks like someone's hunting spot or setup to you then a duck is gonna bust you in a heartbeat.

[Greenhead Smacker]

Our season down here doesn't start until the first weekend of November, so many of the birds have color. During our early september teal season, however, all of the teal are brown. So we use almost all brown decoys. I would suggest doing something kind of the same. I'm not sure when y'all's season starts, but go scouting, see what the birds look like, and imitate them.

[Lybeck]

our season starts mid October up here. I went scouting today lots of ducks but most were bluewing and Cinnamon teal which leave long before season starts and a few shovlers and some mallards.