What would you do to help Cumberland?

[QUOTE=Coleman1;285443]My guess is the State Fish and Game folks could really help in telling us how they prepare for a new lake with brush piles, clean up, etc.? This is a golden opportunity for those of us who want to help improve the fishing to volunteer. Just let us know what we can do to help. I recently retired and have time to help any way I can.[/QUOTE]

I have heard from a buddy at KDFWR that they are planning this kind of stuff with lots of manpower. I'm pretty sure they will also be accepting volunteers.

The only bad part is the size of cumberland. To have any sizable impact on structure implantation on cumberland its going to take the KDFW, every fishin.com member, every fisherman in the state, and half the population of somerset. But on the flip side, I think we will have five or six years to do some work.

I realize everyone here, myself included, is serious about helping Cumberland if given the opportunity to do so. But just in order to try and use humor as therapy...what do you all think about the diea of maybe selling some of the "new land" that's resulting from the lower water levels to the Ohio Navy all the while knowing full good and well that eventually that land will be under water again sometime in the future?

It's only a joke, so don't bust my chops on this.

"Newly rennovated Lakeside Lots"
Maybe we could get eric estrada to do a TV ad......ROTFLMAO

I guess I'll bite. I'm from Ohio and would love to live on or in your lake. As long as it provides good structure for the fish in that lake. I think this a great opportunity to make Lake Cumberland the trophy lake that it used to be. Can you imagine the impact that trees and grass in the shallows will have on the entire ecosystem? The shad will explode along with all kinds of minnows, sunfish, bass, walleye and yes even striper. What will happen on this lake if the gizzard shad population explodes due to proper habitat. I see huge bass, walleye and stripers. I see benifits for ALL. I wish I lived close enough to help with any improvements that WE could do to help improve this fantastic fishery. I just hope that the fish in this lake can hold on until they can see the vast improvements that will obviously occur.

The vegitation will happend on its own in a few short years, by 7 years, they will be contracting to have it cleaned up thats when groups like this can make the biggest difference.
Lets Hope the contractor's doing the work would get the truth out about whats going on? How long, and how involved it will be. Sorry my faith is so weak in the core.

Ky has reaped the rewards for there effort for the most part; but my instincts tell me were not getting anything close to the truth on this isssue.

maybe Katrina, or maybe the fact the Cumberland county is getting one of the highest tech 911 systems put together ever after years of begging?

I don't fish Cumberland, but from an outside view, it seems that the best and most simple thing folks could would be to build brush piles while the water is down.

KDFWR has projects on other lakes to where people volunteer to help build brush piles when the lakes are at winter pool. There is another thread going on the board about such a project happening at Barren in a few weeks.

I manage 500 acres in Western Hardin County. The property has a few thousand small cedar trees (5-8 feet tall) in various fields. KDFWR is coming this friday to take a load of them for building brush piles on Nolin and Rough. If anyone wants to take some of them for building brush piles on C'land, get in touch with me. You can have all of them that you're willing to cut and take.

i feel like cumberland does need more underwater structure. Now would be the time but it would be rotted by the time we get to fish them....LOL... Sounds like a great ideal

It seems like every year Kentucky has a major tornado or two somewhere. I wonder if it would be possible to aquire some of the old building material debris and use it to build fish structure. A couple years ago a tornado hit Madisonville Ky. and wiped out an entire lumber yard. Truckload after truckload of lumber was hauled to a landfill and buried.

My spidey sense tells me that there would be some pretty serious resistance to using treated lumber.

If the lake is going to be down for an very long time, say 7 to 10 yrs, first the lake level needs to be determined and if it needs to go down futher then do it now so people can go in and put cover etc, after a couple of years there will be a lot of new growth naturally, the lake could become a good bass lake for a while, but some of the strypers and trout could suffer. They just need to decide and get it done, take it to a no fail safe level and fix the sucker for once and for all.

The environ-MENTAL-ists might not like it but the fish dont mind it one bit. We used five twenty foot trailer loads of it to build structure for a buddies private strip pit lake and the fish hold to it real good.