Patoka

[Redbug]

Thinking about a trip to Patoka for the first time in years over the holiday weekend, any help with bass fishing (Patterns, colors, good areas) would be greatly appreciated.

[idbefishing]

you better planning on being on the water before the sun come up. Throw a buzz frog(green pumpkin, black, doesn't matter) over the top of the grass (it's all over the place) and hang on. I can't help you after the sun come up.

[Moose1am]

Grass near deep points is where I would look after the sun comes up. Check the CORP of Engineers web site for depth and temp and oxygen levels profiles for Patoka Lake. That will show you generally where the oxygen levels are depleted below a certain depth at this time of the year. Check the flow rate at the ****. Patoka does flow some water and that could make a slight current though the lake. Last I checked the thermocline (sudden drop in water temp) was around 15 ft deep and the oxycline (sudden drop in Dissolved Oxygen Level) was around 18ft. As long as there is 5 or 6 ppm of dissolved Oxygen in the water the fish will be there. If the DO gets below 4 ppm you won't find many sport fish in that water.

Weed or submerged green vegetation will produce dissolved oxygen when the sun is shining. They consume dissolved oxygen out of the water when the sun goes down. ie they turn on respiration and stop photosynthesising after the sun goes down. But when the sun shines they produce lot of dissolved oxygen where the suns rays can reach the plant leaves. Below about 15 ft their is not enough sunlight rays to let the plants survive. That will be what's called the weed breakline. Fish may hang around this breakline if it's above the thermocline and comfortable to them and if it has enough Dissolved oxygen.

Check the wind direction for the day you intend to fish. If the wind has been consistent out of one direction it will have had time to set up a lake current due to the force of the wind. The wind will push plankton along it's path and pile that up on the windward shorelines over time. If the wind is variable this won't happen. But if it's strong and constant over time this occurs. The water that reaches the windward shoreline will be blocked by the bank and then turned back and downward creating an under toe. That will wash food and dissolved oxygen back under and out into the lake from the windward bank. Fish often will follow the food source and go with the winds so to speak. This may help you eliminate some non productive water. If you can find a wind blown point that drops off into nearby deep water that has some weed growth going down the point into 10f to 15ft of water you could have a good spot.

Watch the sun angle and fish accordingly. Fish may seek the shady side of a point so that they are not seen by their prey. They may hang at the edge of the shade to avoid being seen easily by the shad and then they can pounce out and capture food. They may also suspend out away from the bank at about 15ft deep and rest. You may have to troll and cover lots of water to find these fish. That's hard to do on Patoka in the timber sections.

Look for inside or outside turns in the weedlines. They can concentrate the fish at times. Especially an Outside turn that extend farther out from the point, shoreline or submerged hump. That will be the contact point that that the fish coming up out of the deep water sanctuary first encounters. They may stage there for a short time before going shallow to feed.

If you fish early or during a rain or cloudy day the fish can go shallow and scatter. If it's hot and bright they may go deep and hold close to cover along deep points or over the top or sides of deep underwater humps.

Don't forget the deep water area in 25 to 30ft of water. The big island out in the middle of the lake has a river channel running nearby it to it's East. That river channel is about 35 to 40 ft deep and it makes a big loop in spots. There is a Corp of engineer fish attractor on the Western part of the tongue of that big river loop. There is where Bill Dance did a fishing show on year back when the lake first opened. He caught over 100 bass in one day at that spot. My god father from INDY sent me an Indianapolis Star Newspaper article about that trip. And I have the best map of Patoka Lake with contour intervals of 2.5 ft in spots. I got this map from a friend who got it from the Corps before the lake was built. It shows all the fence lines, property owners and ditches that were there before the lake was impounded. I have digital scans of all 28 pages of this map. The map uses Indiana Plane Coordinate Systems instead of DEG MIN SEC though. Which makes it hard to use with my garmin gps. I have to convert the map coordinates from one system to another before I can use the digital maps in OziExplorer. One day I will get that project finished. LOL Then I will be able to pull the Patoka Lake map up on my computer point the map cursor to a good looking spot on the map and then get accurate gps deg min sec map coordinates to use as a way point for my garmin gps unit. When I get to the lake I simply tell the gps unit to go to that particular map coordinate and then scout the sight before fishing. Now this system will be great to help me located those deep submerged building substructure that are now covered up by 30ft of water but were once parts of Newton Stewart. Or they may help me locate the old bridge structures that are now in deep water. OR I could find the intersections of two roads that are not in deep water. As long as the map is accurate to within plus or minus 3 meters this should work.

And there will most likely be some bass hiding up in the grass even during the hot summer months. Not all bass go deep I have read. Some may stay in the shallow water if there is shade and enough dissolved oxygen for them to survive. And if you find the bass's food you will soon find the bass.

Now the prey species of the fish you are after and then follow the prey species. This is something I wish I knew more about. There are many different specie of crayfish.

Oh and learn to turn you depth sounder and interrupt it's readings. Play with it on manual settings in order to learn to tell hard bottom from soft bottom. Lots of times you can find a place on the bottom of the lake where the bottom changes from soft to hard and that can be a good spot to check out. You may be trying to locate an old rock road that is now submerged and this is one way to find it. Also look at any road way as you drive along the highways. Notice how the ditches are along the sides of the road. Now image that being underwater and you are going over across the submerged road with your boat at a right angle to the road. Perpendicular. Say you are going east to west. Throw out a buoy on each side of the road where you see the depth sounder showing the bottom drop about 2ft then come back up and then drop two feet again. Those two foot drops are the ditch. Now go North or South of that east west line and then repeat the process back across the road way. Map out the lay of the submerged land in your minds eye. You can do this mentally or use buoy's until you can learn to do this. Practice using the depth sounder and it will pay big dividends. Learn to fish the deep water sanctuaries and get away from the banks during the hot summer months. There is a lot of water to fish so try to eliminate as much of the non productive water as you can before even leaving the house. Work up a plan and then work the plan. Keep a log book of what occurs. Document the time of day, light conditions, wind direction, speed etc and water and air temps. All these weather factors and environmental factors will effect the fish or their food

Try using some neutral buoyancy crank baits that will dive down to 15 ft and then suspend at that depth.

If you troll crank baits you can cover a lot of water fast. You may have to get a reel or attachment that can tell you how many feet of line you let out behind the boat. The length of the line out and the diameter of the line and the type of bait along with the boat speed with determine the depth that the baits run. Adjust accordingly. Go over a part of the lake that has a clean bottom with a known depth and then let out more or less line until the baits are just ticking the bottom at that depth. Say it's a ten foot flat. Note the type of line, diameter of the line, amount of line out behind the boat, type of bait, and the boat speed. I use my Garmin GPS to determine the boat speed accurately to 0.1 or 0.2 mph. Write this down on a log book and and then you can repeat this on any other part of the lake. Remember that lots of fish will suspend out away from the breaklines out over deep water. They may be down 15 feet below the surface over 50ft of water right in the middle of the old creek channel or river channel just resting there. They then may move laterally to the shoreline to feed in the early morning or late evening. They may be just 100 yard out from the edge of a big flat waiting for supper to get there and taking a nap. You may have to get the speed and depth just right to hit them on the head to get them to take the bait. Bait color is another factor. So try more than one color of bait over the time you fish. Let the fish tell you what they want that particular time of the day. Remember as the sun rises and set the angle of the suns rays entering the water will change and the color of the light penetrating the water below will change as well. We only see the light that is REFLECTED off objects. And underwater the only light rays that go below 30ft may be green wavelengths of light or bright yellow. That means that a fish will see a white lure as being green or yellow. The red wavelengths of light can't penetrate that deep and are washed out. Since no red light can reach the lure and bounce off it there is no way that the lure can have any red waves of light coming off it's surface. In 50ft of water all may be black. No light waves reach that depth. And it all depends on the water clarity of the amount of suspended matter in the water. Muddy waters upriver at Patoka in the early spring may not let any light reach 10 ft down. So fish according to the water clarity and the amount of light and the time of day.

When the sun is at high noon there is a lot of light penetrating deeply into the lakes depth. but at 6am most of that light is bouncing off the waters surface and not getting down into the depth. Each hour the sun's position changes so follow the shady parts of the underwater structure that you are fishing accordingly.

Good luck. Patoka covers 8,880 and there are a lot of good fishing spots to check out. Remember that there is always the next day to check out a new spot.

Another trick to try is attaching a smaller jig or fly to the last treble hook on a crank bait and trolling them together. Sometimes that can trigger a reaction strike.

I trolled some Buck Perry Spoon Plugs down on KY lake and within 15 minutes had hooked into a nice 4 or 5 lb bass. I trolled across the point where an old creek bed went into the old TN river bed. I was using wire line and a very heavy duty ocean type fishing rod and reel. I had pulleys on the rod to guide the wire fishing line. I was trolling the bigger series spoon plugs. I would have caught a lot more fish that day but I lost my spoon plug on a stump. So you might want to buy and keep a plug knocker (retriever) in the boat with you.

Boat control is another subject. Some guys put out a bucket on a rope behind their boats to slow them down. Or they install trolling plates on the big motor. I can troll at 2.5 mph with my Minn-Kota AT 50 on a calm day. I also have a Minn-Kota Drift sock that I can throw out behind the boat and attack to the back of the boat with a rope. Sometimes when it's really windy I could use another wind sock.

I have found and read that the fish will face into the current looking for food to drift into sight. This is what trout do in river or streams. Bass may do the same thing if there is a slight current. They will face into the current waiting for food to come by. If you bring the bait up behind them they may not hit it. But if you bring it to them from the front they may whack it good. Just something to remember. This is something that's critical when slow trolling for big crappie. It may work on bass too if you decide to try trolling for the fish.

If you want to troll try trolling along the old river channels out on the main lake. Weekdays are better to do this as there will be much less boat traffic and water skiers.

source.

Regards,

Moose1am

[chrisk]

i HAVE A CLUB TOURNAMENT ON PATOKA THIS SATURDAY NIGHT MOOSE. WHAT ISLAND ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, IS IT CLOSE TO NEWTON STEWART OR DOWN BY THE DAM. Any NIGHT TIPS OR SPOTS TO TRY AT NIGHT WOULD BE APPRECIATED. THANKS

[Moose1am]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Jul-19-06 AT 07:12PM (EST)[/font][p]Note: I have not fished these islands at Night only during the daytime in July and that was years ago back in 1978/79/80 when the lake first opened up. Fish may not be in the weeds at night as the weeds are not producing oxygen when the sun's not shining on them. They respire and use oxygen at night and stop producing oxygen at night. Fish may move shallower during the night also. I am just getting into night fishing myself and I mainly have been fishing for crappie at night. I have only fished for bass at night on several occasions. I do better at dusk and dawn when fishing for bass. But then again I don't see so good at night and can't judge distances very well at night. Most of my attempts to cast crank baits at night end up in the tree tops. LOL That and I don't like either mosquitoes or bug spray so I have to really force myself to fish much at night.



The ones 2 miles upstream from the **** out on the main lake. Spot #23 on the Patoka Lake Fishing Hot Spots map. But move over from the dot labeled 23 to the other side of the island where there is an "*" shown on the map. That's labeled a hazard but it's really a fish attractor that the Army Corp of Engineers put in the lake before it was flooded back in 1978. I think it's a rectangular log fish attractor. They took out the trees and lashed them together with big wires and sunk them at the bottom in that area where the river makes a big U turn. The point of land should be a good spot to fish. I have caught large pike and bass on that spot back when the lake was first formed. I have not fished that area for a long time as there are so many water skiers and now jet skies. But you may be able to fish it if you have a larger boat. My small boat rocks way too much in the wakes but it's only 16 ft long and about 48" wide so it's not really made for big water or lots of waves. These days I prefer to fish in the speed limit areas or in protected coves. If I ever do go up to Patoka lake in the middle of the week and troll I would target that spot for sure.

Regards,

Moose1am

[chrisk]

Thanks Moose. Will try it for sure.