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Going to Patoka this weekend and wanted to see if there is any current info on fishing. Water temps up the creek? Any bigger fish pulled shallow yet? (haven't caught them in any other lake... why start would Patoka be different?)
Any particular creeks which are producing?
Send me an email if you'd prefer not to post.
I fished Patoka yesterday for 4 or 5 hours. We launched at the Osbourne ramp and fished up river but pretty much within site of the ramp. Everything we caught was up shallow and in the weeds. However, they were all small. We tried fishing some steeper banks and flooded cover but never even got a nibble. As soon as we got to the back of the bay and in the weeds again we hooked up with another fish. Never did see any big ones though. We caught them a variety of ways, jigs, worms, rattletrap, rapala. Water temp on the surface was around 70 and about 3 foot down on the bottom of the trolling motor it was 67 or 68 all day. We never fished anything main lake. There was a big Skeeter tournament there yesterday, anyone know what it took to win that? Saw a few boats up river but I think most of them were fishing main lake.
Last week the surface water temps at 2ft below the surface were 69 deg F. Seems that this weeks 80 deg Air temps during the day and all the sunshine has heated the lake back up a few degrees.
It's hard to read the graph for water levels at Patoka now that the Corp of Engineers changed the way they display the graphic water levels info on their web site.
But they do post how much water levels have changed over the last 24 hours. But this makes everyone that wants to know what the water levels are doing to check their web site daily.
Water levels were at 540 ft last week or about 539.5 ft asl. Since we have not had a lot of rain this week I suspect that the water levels is falling slowly. This time of the year they start lowering the lake level to winter pool. Winter Pool is 532ft or about 533ft asl. Summer pool is 536 ft asl for reference.
Follow the Shad and you will find the game fish. A big bass or even a 3lb crappie can eat a 3" to 4" long gizzard shad for dinner.
Shad follow the plankton. During the low light conditions the plankton comes shallow and during sunny days the plankton swims back down into deeper water. They rise and fall vertically in the water column. Some zooplankton will swim up and down in the water column. The gizzard shad are feeding on these zooplankton and phytoplankton so they will adjust their depth to follow their food source. Follow the winds and you will follow the free floating plankton.
The shad also migrate into the end or back of bays at dusk and spend the night there. Then as the sun comes up and gets higher in the sky the shad migrate out of the back of the bays to the main lake. This is a recurring pattern in the summer and in the fall.
Follow the shad and find the bigger fish.
Not sure if Patoka Lake has turned over as the corps have not posted any more temp readings since 9/11/06. And those readings that were last posted showed abnormally low DO levels all the way throughout the water column on that day.
Regards,
Moose1am