Barkley or Kentucky?

Fishing a couple of days at both lakes. Is bass fishing better on Barkley or Kentucky? Putting in KY Dam Village, what are the bass doing this time of year? Any help on lures, and location greatly apprecitated.

If you are not familiar with Lake Barkley, you can run into some big trouble this time of year, literally. It is a tough lake to navigate and real easy to lose a lower unit during the best of times. The water on both lakes is very low for this time of year, almost at winter pool. If you are unfamiliar with both lakes, I would stick with Kentucky Lake just from a saftey point of view.

There are advantages to both lakes. I fished KY about a week ago, and the water in the bays were very clear. While I've seen good reports from folks fishing the same day, I had a pretty tough day. The only fish I found were KY's that were suspended under moored barges, and some stripers on humps.

I've heard if you can fish the grass on South KY, you can do well.

Barkley is dangerous, but stay in the channels, and really slow down if you are unsure where you are. I personally like Barkley better, and generally do a little better there. I haven't been able to fish nearly enough this year to really say, but I would look to Barkley myslef. The water is generally less clear, so you can get away with more "mistakes" while fishing on Barkley.

My best color for soft plastics is, and has always been, pumpkin/chartruese. In fact when I buy Zoom Lizards in that color, I also dye the tail and sometimes the back legs with SpikeIt.

Good luck, and let us know how you do.

Danny