Barkley is horrible!

This is by far the worst trip down ever! So excited to flip bushes etc, and had 10 bites in 3 days. Missed at least a 4lb today in the heart of bush. But a 3.11 and a 5.5 smallie on a secondary pt with a channel bumping it, on a TRD bait. Can side image the bays and see 100's suspended in the middle of no where. Like they are in shock. I like it high if fish are there but south Barkley is handing it to us.:confused::mad: Going north Barkley for rest of week. We are the only ones at the motel for 2 days. And try to fix my Helix 9 on console. Added a glassed in transducer for running and now lost my DI and sonar jumps erratic like. Not a good trip at all this year.
BE SAFE OUT THERE!
DEBRI IS EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!! LOGS, TRASH CRAZY.

[QUOTE=swimjigboy;562036]This is by far the worst trip down ever! So excited to flip bushes etc, and had 10 bites in 3 days. Missed at least a 4lb today in the heart of bush. But a 3.11 and a 5.5 smallie on a secondary pt with a channel bumping it, on a TRD bait. Can side image the bays and see 100's suspended in the middle of no where. Like they are in shock. I like it high if fish are there but south Barkley is handing it to us.:confused::mad: Going north Barkley for rest of week. We are the only ones at the motel for 2 days. And try to fix my Helix 9 on console. Added a glassed in transducer for running and now lost my DI and sonar jumps erratic like. Not a good trip at all this year.
BE SAFE OUT THERE!
DEBRI IS EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!! LOGS, TRASH CRAZY.[/QUOTE]

PM Sent

Caught a few with quality but slow. nice to see life in the shallows!

Barkley is in a serious down cycle for numbers of fish. 8 years ago I could catch 10 times the number of fish and better quality than now. There were times ledge fishing when I would reel in a fish and there would be 10 more swimming along side the hooked one, and would have multiple double hookups. Hard to even get many bites now.

I've kind of thought that. I didn't make it down last spring. This year only had quick 3 days and they dropped the lake 3 foot in a couple days so it was bad too. However, spring 2015 had a great trip. Caught a good number of fish and shallow as u could get. Caught some decent fish, but nothing over 5. Year before that, water was down, but caught a few over and around 5 and a lot in 4lb. range. The numbers were down though. When I started coming every spring about 15 years ago it seemed I'd catch 50-75 a day, catch some bigun, and get a nap on the boat in as well. Now, seems a good 30-50 fish days are fewer and the big fish are as well. It takes more work to get em. .... I don't really know the answer whether it's the fish, or me?

Just check the tournament results to see the picture of the lake. I'm strictly a pan man and we've caught a handful of 3.5lb bass this week while redear fishing. My eight year old had an 8lber break off on Thursday while redear fishing.

The last 5 years I've fished this time in May..I've fished 3 days each trip..catching 80 to 100 bass each time..there are many spots and many different ways to fish..what not be working for you...might be working somewhere else in the lake..change things up...I see nothing wrong with this awesome fishery

This is a good thread. Maybe it's just a few bad years but man, Barkley just isn't what it use to be. The numbers of fish just don't seem to be there like they use to be. I'm sure guys like Dave Stewart, who are a 100x better than myself do well, but it's been pretty tough these past 2-3 years. Maybe it's just hitting the lakes when the water is in flux or the Asian carp but I wish it would go back to how it us to be.

I usually LOVE barkley............

I fish South Barkley all the time. This year, I've only made a couple trips down there. While the LM bass have been off, I simply murdered the whites, and hybrids on multiple trips this year.

On North Barkley, I had multiple solid days in March and April. Heck one weekend, our first 8 fish were keepers, and we had a 20 lb bag in 30 minutes.........

Lately though, Barkley has been the dead sea............I went 2 time this past 5 days to barkley and caught less than 10 fish total in 20 hours if fishing...........

ON the other hand, Kentucky Lake is on FIRE..........This high water has made it pretty cool....