Lake Cumberland "Jumps"

[OutdoorLife]

Hey lets all go towards Beaver/Otter and the dam and sit in the 79 boat floatilla waiting for it to happen so we can all charge the jump at once only to see it instantly disappear.....LOL....

Yea that sounds like a wonderful idea.....ha ha..

Perfect plan!

[boskeet]

I've been a few times in the last couple of weeks and have seen 4 or 5 fish on the surface with their "jumps" lasting about 5 seconds.

I agree with the other posts about the good 'ol days when you could pick a day and almost guarantee a massive school would stay up for a couple minutes. Big fish were caught then too. I don't ever remember catching a fish smaller than 26 inches with lots over 30.

I hope someday soon the fish will get back to their pre dam construction days, but I think it's pretty clear that it's not happening this year. From what others have said, I guess some decent jumps are occurring but def. not consistent enough for me to make the drive and waste the gas.

[adam7456]

Besides the change in the lake from being full all year the fall weather we are having needs to be taken into consideration. In my 10 years of fishing Lake Cumberland I don't remember ever having a week of mid-70s and sunny weather in November. I imagine that would push the typical fall pattern back a few weeks.

[striperjoe]

Was there Oct 19- 23rd. No jumps , most everyone fishing live bait but us. I must use downriggers in the fall. So the first 2 days just 2 fish both in Wolf Creek . Thursday went down near the dam. About noon we got into some fish 65-75ft deep and they started ripping my jigs off the downriggers. 2 hours we were limited. Went back Friday same thing about noon here they came.


This is my take on the Jumps, It's been very warm so far and a lot of bright sunny days . This may have the Jumps delayed for a week or two.
I hope to get down again next week hoping they will be more active with weather changing.

[stripernut1]

folks i sure do hope this doesnt come off as being argumentative, not my intent. but for those who think the water temps are too warm for jumps??? keep in mind there were huge schools staying up for 5 minutes each time they came up.....IN JULY.

i wish i had an explanation why there arent any fishable jumps, i dont have any idea, but i can assure you it doesnt have any thing to do with the warm weather or the surface temps.

there are tons of bait on the surface, and normally where there is bait there are fish. but they just arent coming up.

ive fished 4 of the last 5 days and havent seen one event that i would qualify as a "jump"

[mhall]

folks i sure do hope this doesnt come off as being argumentative, not my intent. but for those who think the water temps are too warm for jumps??? keep in mind there were huge schools staying up for 5 minutes each time they came up.....IN JULY.

i wish i had an explanation why there arent any fishable jumps, i dont have any idea, but i can assure you it doesnt have any thing to do with the warm weather or the surface temps.

there are tons of bait on the surface, and normally where there is bait there are fish. but they just arent coming up.

ive fished 4 of the last 5 days and havent seen one event that i would qualify as a "jump"

Agreed and here is my take on it and it will be met with people getting flustered or laughing at me.

I think the fish are adapting to boat and human pressure. I saw a jump in creek X two weeks ago that was every bit of 60 to 80 fish in it. It was one of the largest jumps I have seen in the last three years. I was 200 yards away and I started the big motor and started, ''EASING'' that way. Well I closed it to about 100 yards and they went down and I was just getting ready to stop the big motor. Well a week later it happened again on a smaller jump in almost the exact same fashion. Now maybe I'm giving the Striped rascals way too much credit but maybe I'm not. BTW I saw this happen a lot last year as well.

Pressure any creature enough and they eventually start adapting to that pressure and do things differently. I have hunted and fished all my life and have seen this with many of God's furry and scaly creations.


They hear that big motor coming from a great distance and associate it with humans and boats. Laugh at me all you want if anybody has a better theory I'm listening...

[mhall]

Oh while I'm talking about fish smarts, wanna guess what fish I think are the smartest that swim in that lake?

Bet you think I'm going to say Smallmouth right....................Nope big ole Spotted bass are some cagey dudes. They even like to come up out of thirty feet of water and stare at your bait, you and your boat and laugh only to ease back down like some kind of mirage or Ghost.....I bet Stripernut is laughing reading this but I also bet he agrees with me to. There are Spots in that lake that would scare a man half to death, good luck catching them. That Behemoth Jeff, aka Stripernut caught north of 6lb several years ago is a fish of a lifetime without question...

[stripernut1]

i agree with the theory about conditioning the fish to spook when the hear/feel the motor racing in on them. another thing i wonder is this, are there as many fish as there used to be? now im not saying there arent any fish left, what i am asking is the population down compared to what it has been. you hear it over and over , people saying they just cant locate the big schools on the graph like they used to. i have seen a couple big schools lately as opposed to doens of huge schools in the past.
look at it this way, if you deer hunt a farm that has 10 bucks that call it home, you are more likely to see a buck than if youre hunting a farm that has 2 bucks on it. so.....if there arent as many big schools as there once were, the chances of sitting in one spot and seeing a big school jump while youre there,

just a shot in the dark, i dont have any data to support or refute this idea

[Mean Morone]

I saw a video showing the state putting out gill nets to sample the striper population. The guy said the state put 550,000 stripers in there year before last. That lake is huge and has plenty of bait in it(at least that's what I hear, ) so I think it could stand a few more fish in it. I remember that they did a study years ago and found out that the stripers use the entire lake(surprise! ). They said then that they would increase the number of stripers stocked per year. What happened to that plan? My local lake gets more hybrids than that stocked every year and is just a fraction of the size of Lake Cumberland.

The other thing, and yes I'm thinking outside the box, is that the bait in the lake may have changed some. I know Alewives are still the number one bait by volume, but with the lowering of the lake and the brush and grass developing on shore, I think gizzards and threadfins may have made a good comeback. Maybe stripers have changed their ways according to their bait preference. Now I've only fished Lake Cumberland for a little over 20 yrs. so I don't know how they acted when the majority of bait was gizzards and threadfins. Did they jump like crazy back then?

[dabassking]

Agreed and here is my take on it and it will be met with people getting flustered or laughing at me.

I think the fish are adapting to boat and human pressure. I saw a jump in creek X two weeks ago that was every bit of 60 to 80 fish in it. It was one of the largest jumps I have seen in the last three years. I was 200 yards away and I started the big motor and started, ''EASING'' that way. Well I closed it to about 100 yards and they went down and I was just getting ready to stop the big motor. Well a week later it happened again on a smaller jump in almost the exact same fashion. Now maybe I'm giving the Striped rascals way too much credit but maybe I'm not. BTW I saw this happen a lot last year as well.

Pressure any creature enough and they eventually start adapting to that pressure and do things differently. I have hunted and fished all my life and have seen this with many of God's furry and scaly creations.


They hear that big motor coming from a great distance and associate it with humans and boats. Laugh at me all you want if anybody has a better theory I'm listening...

I definitely agree that fish can become conditioned to outboard noise. I don't fish Cumberland much, but I know when the bass get into the jumps at Nolin, you have to get that dumb school that doesn't go down when you idle to them. Or you have to get lucky enough for the jumps to come up within casting distance. You could waste half a tank of gas chasing jumps across that lake and you might not even catch a fish.

That reminds me of a school that my dad and I got into at Nolin this summer. There was the biggest school either of us had ever seen across the lake. We watched it for a bit and it just wouldn't go down, so we idled over there and sure enough, they stayed up! We were jacked! It was like we had our boat in the middle of a boiling pot of water with all the fish busting all around us. We threw everything we had and never got bit for as long as the fish stayed up. What's up with that? We're still confused as to why they wouldn't eat anything we threw. I guess when you have that much real bait, there isn't a reason to hit anything that looks suspicious.

[mhall]

I saw a video showing the state putting out gill nets to sample the striper population. The guy said the state put 550,000 stripers in there year before last. That lake is huge and has plenty of bait in it(at least that's what I hear, ) so I think it could stand a few more fish in it. I remember that they did a study years ago and found out that the stripers use the entire lake(surprise! ). They said then that they would increase the number of stripers stocked per year. What happened to that plan? My local lake gets more hybrids than that stocked every year and is just a fraction of the size of Lake Cumberland.

The other thing, and yes I'm thinking outside the box, is that the bait in the lake may have changed some. I know Alewives are still the number one bait by volume, but with the lowering of the lake and the brush and grass developing on shore, I think gizzards and threadfins may have made a good comeback. Maybe stripers have changed their ways according to their bait preference. Now I've only fished Lake Cumberland for a little over 20 yrs. so I don't know how they acted when the majority of bait was gizzards and threadfins. Did they jump like crazy back then?

Scott he lake has exploded with threadfin the last several years. I have seen it where you felt like you could walk across their backs at times and make it to shore. I see Gizzards some but they are not that abundant like the threadfins and Alwive. I honestly think that is why the Spots have increased in ''AVERAGE'' size there the last few years. They are constantly gorging on threadfins. They puke in my boat often showing me their lunch...

[apb]

Agreed and here is my take on it and it will be met with people getting flustered or laughing at me.

I think the fish are adapting to boat and human pressure....

Definitely possible. Talked to a guide years ago who told me that he had times when only some guides in their group were catching fish. Fishing the same place, same depth, same baits. Only difference: guides catching were fishing from boats with 4 stroke motors.

Also talked to another guide who would turn his depth finder off when he located a school of fish. He felt that they could hear the ping from the depth finder.

Oh, and Mark, we may be laughing at you, but its for completely different reasons

....
The other thing, and yes I'm thinking outside the box, is that the bait in the lake may have changed some. I know Alewives are still the number one bait by volume, but with the lowering of the lake and the brush and grass developing on shore, I think gizzards and threadfins may have made a good comeback. Maybe stripers have changed their ways according to their bait preference. Now I've only fished Lake Cumberland for a little over 20 yrs. so I don't know how they acted when the majority of bait was gizzards and threadfins. Did they jump like crazy back then?

I think this certainly is playing a part. Different baits, so different patterns. Gizzards and Threadfins like open water, and will go shallow early and late in the day. Unlike Alewifes, they will head to the surface when chased by a school of stripers. Alewifes stay down. Gizzards and Threadfins also will typically stay shallower than alewifes. They like different parts of the lake too.