Quote Originally Posted by 98zr2 View Post
I wasn't looking for the full Temp profile, but just a recent surface temp. With all the fisherman that fish Patoka it isn't that unreasonable to ask for data that isn't 2 weeks old. There is a page on the corp's website that is updated everyday and it was saying the water temp was in the mid fifty's when I asked the question. I was just looking for confirmation.

For your future reference here is the link http://lrl-apps.lrl.usace.army.mil/w...eorlresobs.txt
I'm not sure why but this IN fishing site has a lot of people that will read the post but very few reply. And those that do reply are not always very helpful with information. I'm not sure why it's like this. It would be better if everyone tried to help each other in here.

Thanks for the link. I lost touch with that link when my hard drive crashed the last time. I had to start all over again from scratch and am still trying to recover a lot of useful information like that link to the COE lake temperatures.

I've noticed that lake surface temperatures can vary through out the day and also vary depending on where on the lake they are taken. Areas that receive the most sunlight and have a darker bottom color may warm up faster and more than shaded areas. And the shallows are going to be much warmer than the deeper waters.

What I look for is relative water temperatures in different parts of the lake. But those are normally going to be the same shallow areas that get the most sunlight and that have a darker colored bottom. Those will almost always be warmer than the deeper and shaded areas.

To me the time of the day is as critical as the water temperature as they will correlate with each other on days when the winds are coming out of the SW. Winds are normally coming out of the SW in this area unless a cold front is moving though and then the high pressure will cause the winds to come out of the North.

Now I read a report on crappie.com where Crevens went fishing at a lake in Southern IN and gave an excellent report on how he caught some nice big fat crappie. He even gave the water temperatures as the day progressed. He fished deep with 20 lb test line trolling 300 bandit type crank baits at 1.5 to almost 2 mph and was a few feet off the bottom in 15 ft of water or so. He even posted pictures of all his fish. We need more guys like him in here giving fishing reports. I've noticed that since pan fish like crappie are so numerous the crappie fishermen often share their fishing information with others a little more. Now they don't give out GPS coordinates or anything like that but they do like to share general fishing information with others. Maybe there is less competition among the pan fish guys? Or maybe they are just older fellows who are more social with others.