Patoka Lake, Lynnville Lake, KY lake, Rend Lake, Gibson Lake? Snakey Point near Oakland City, IN. Creeks emptying into the OHIO River. Dams on the Ohio River when the river is lower and stable. Right now the River is too high to launch at Newburgh, IN. But the Yankee town ALCOA launch ramp on little Pigeon Creek was OK today, 12/26/06 around 2 pm. If the creek comes up another 3 to 5 ft then the parking lot will be flooded. So check the river level for 12/26/06 and then use that as a guide to when the launch ramp there at Yankeetown will be usable.

BTW where do you live and where do you normally fish? These places are all based on my living in the very Southern Tip of IN.

Hovey's lake will be open after duck season. That may be the end of Feb and for sure in early March this years. Check the waterfowl seasons to see when they end in the Ohio River Zone. After the waterfowl season is over the crappie fishing at Hovey can begin. They have some huge fast growing crappie down at Hovey's lake. But the lake is restricted to motors 10HP or smaller or electric trolling motors. It's about 1300 acres in size normally.
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I don't know very much about fishing for smallmouth bass and especially not very much about fishing for them in river systems.

But I read the In-Fisherman Book on Small mouth bass fishing and I think it was saying that during the winter months the Small Mouth Bass crowd together in huge schools. So all the sm bass are in just a few deep holes in the lakes. I do remember the authors cautioning the readers of their book not to over fish an area in the Winter Time as it's easy to fish a lake dry. Again this was what the authors of this book were saying.

I have been trying to read up more on Small Mouth Bass and Ray Rigsby had a good forum on this subject. Those guys are good at finding and catching the SM Bass and I read that they like to fish the White River in places and do rather well. They also fish places like Dale Hollow. I've personally seen Ray Fish the Purdue Bass Club Fishing Tournament at Patoka Lake a few years ago one September and he caught a nice 5 or 6 lb SM bass that day along with another fish or two. He was one of the few guys to bring any fish into the weigh-in. I took a student out and fished the back end of Painter creek until the fog lifted and then tried to find some deep spots near the mouth of Painter Creek but without luck. We finally caught one 14.5" (short LB Bass) in the mouth of one of the coves near the mouth of Painter creek. We should have fished that area harder because there were fish in there. Later I got a better map of this area and figured out why that bass was in there that day. BTW this was one of them blue bird days with highs in the 70 deg Range and not one cloud in the sky and the BP was way over 30" HG. But the bright skies and the sudden drop in water temp had put the bass down into deeper water.

Regards,

Moose1am