Ky Lake Water Conditions-Present & Historical DataBase

Thanks for sharing with us. I found that data interesting.

Check out the Turbidity Data and watch how it clears up and then gets turbid (muddy) again with the rains or currents in the lake.

KY lake's water is getting much clearer than it ever was in the past.

I wonder if they lake has more zebra muscles now and if that's the reason for the improved water quality? They are known to breed quickly and take over water basins and they don't have any natural predators. I did read that Blue cats will feed on muscles during the summer months.

But if the water gets that clear then It does not surprise me that the lake has a lot more underwater vegetation. That really should help the fish populations as the submergent vegetations will give more surface area for the small critters to grow and produce more food for the fish fry and even the larger fish. Most critters in the lake means more biomass in the lake. That's a good thing!

When the crappie fishermen learn to fish the weeds they will start catching more of them Black Crappie.

I think that most crappie fishermen are still fishing the ledges as that's what they have been taught.

I read that crappie location study that the Kentucky DNR guys did a few years back and their data suggested that the black crappie in Blood River were spawning earlier and shallower than the white crappie in that section of KY lake. They found the same thing in Shed Creek too.

I know from fishing Patoka Lake that the Black Crappie like the main lake and they like to associate with the weeds on Patoka Lake. But the bigger white crappie like the stained water in the upper reaches of the lake. But you can find white crappie in all sections of the lake as well.

I have two crappie in an aquarium right now and have discovered an interesting fact. One of my crappie is a black crappie with 7 to 8 dorsal spines. The other is White Crappie with 6 to 7 dorsal spines. And you can watch the black crappie change to a dark skin from time to time. According to the time of the year and the amount of light coming into the room.

Anyway I ran out of minnows a while back and started to feed them small pieces of honey ham. The Black Crappie will eat this eagerly. In fact he comes to the surface and waits for me to hand feed him. He will take off my finger if I put my hand into the water. LOL He actually will splash water out of the aquarium at times. The White crappie will just watch the other one feed. Once when the black crappie got full I put some of the food in the water buy the white crappie. He took it in and spit it right back out. The white crappie wont' eat the lunch meat or baloney. All he wants is Minnows and live minnows at that. He will starve before he would eat the lunch meat. So today I am off to get him some minnows to eat.

I have let these fish go for two weeks without minnows and they do OK.

The black crappie will eat more things than the white crappie from what I am seeing. At least that's what's happening in my aquarium. I have read that black crappie like to eat more insects and that white crappie like to eat more minnows.

Now in the past I had white crappie that would eat meal worms and bee moths. I use to buy those at the store and feed the crappie with them.

The Strip Pits that I fish have both White and Black Crappie in them. The water is more stained in these strip pits. And there is a lot of submergent vegetation in these pits. There is a lot of shallow water in these pits along with very deep water in the 50 ft range.

I wish that my White Crappie would eat the lunch meat too. It would be less expensive to keep them that way.