Low Water Levels in Lakes causing trouble at ramps

[Moose1am]

I managed to get out for a few hours on Sunday afternoon and caught some really nice crappie at Otter Pit.

Water surface temperatures dropped down into the low 70's on Sunday.

Winds were very light with gusts up to 7 mph or so. Guessing on this speed. LOL

Skies were slightly cloudy to sunny. I got sunburned if that tells you anything.

Air temperatures were very pleasant. In fact in the morning it was downright cold and I ended up putting on a long sleeve shirt for that morning while hooking up the boat. I ended up wearing a short sleeve shirt later on.

The fish were not biting right away but around 3:30 pm they really turned on. I caught my first fish and threw out a marker buoy. After that I started to catch some nice slabs. I caught more slabs Sunday than ever before in my entire fishing at the Blue Grass Pits. I ended up with about 10 really nice slab crappie and caught at least 25 or more in total that were smaller. I threw a lot of fish back and I remember counting at least 8 fish that I just threw back into the water.

I cleaned a lot of fish Sunday night for sure.

I had Fish for dinner Monday and Tuesday.

Took some pictures with my el Cheapo Cell Phone Camera. The camera is the cheap part. The Cell phone itself was not cheap. LOL

But the cell phone camera is only about 1 mega pixel and it's best resolution is only 640 x 480. This makes all the pictures pixelated.

By the time I was able to take a picture it was already dark. The only light I had was a bright security light on my back porch and it was at the wrong angle to give me a good outdoors picture with my camera. So I took the cleaning board and the fish inside to take a better picture. LOL. That didn't work either.

So I have a few pictures of several of the biggest fish arranged on my cleaning board. I put a coke can in the picture for size comparison. I tried using a yard stick but found that the picture quality would not allow the numbers on the yard stick to show up on the photos. Man the other day while shopping at Circuit City I saw a nice 12 mega pixel Cannon Camera that was selling for $3700. Wish I had that camera to fool around with.

I have to pay ten cents for each picture that I send to the Verizon Pix-Place. That's the only way I can get the pictures out of my camera and onto my computer. ***** not having a way to hook up directly to my computer with a usb cable but that's the way that Verizon set this cell phone thing up for doing pictures.

I need to break down and just buy a good digital camera someday. Or get my Pentax LX camera body repaired so that I can use my film camera. The mirror got stuck and it screwed up the shutter somehow when the mirror stuck in the up position while I was trying to take a picture. The mirror finally worked loose but the shutter release thing is in need of major repairs. Not really worth spending more money on this old technology but I hate having to throw away a nice camera body that was worth $1000 brand new. I still have many good Pentax lenses for this camera that are worth a lot more money.

But digital is the way to go and I know that.

I'll try to send some of the better pictures of my fish to my pix place tonight and then download them into my computer. I'll see what I can do with them in Paint Shop Pro 9. Maybe I can make the pictures better.

Oh. I was catching these fish on the top of the shelf near a big drop off. I had 15 feet deep water only about 10 ft from 6 ft deep water where there is some submerged brush.

Find a spot like this and fish it for a while. If you don't get any hits find another spot like this. Keep moving around until you find them.

I think that when they are not actively feeding that they will be found suspended out over the deep water at the same level as the top of the shelf. IE from 6ft down to 10 ft down depending on how deep the top of the shelf is.

Note: Otter pit is much more turbid that Blue Grass Pit. There is a lot of sediment in the water. If your boat goes though the submergent vegetation you can see the dirt coming off the plants and making the water more dirty or turbid. I think this is why the fish are much shallower this summer.

I caught fish in the same spot during July when the surface water temps were in the 90's. The key is the deeper water right next to the shallow water feeding shelf.

I was fishing with minnows. And I at first was bitching to myself that I got tiny minnows. I normally get medium chubs which are normally about 1.5" to 2" long. These minnows that I got Sunday were only about 1" long and some were not that long. I thought they would not catch many fish. But boy was I wrong. The big crappie seemed to really eat them up.

Did I say that I caught about 6 crappie that were all 12" long and that the rest were from 10" to 11" in the pictures? All the others that I cleaned were 8" and 9" fish with the smallest ones around 7". I threw the 7" fish and smaller back in the lake.

Moose ,
You are right about the ramps , my trailer dropped off the end of Otter pits ramp and I had to power break my truck in low to get it out . I had to get the boat off the trailer by hand and stepped into the hole , sank up to my chest . The hole is 2-4 ft deep and your tire will drop off into it so be careful ! As for the fishing , the crappie were small { 6" } but caught 7-8 in a couple of hours at the beaver lodge in the cove across from the ramp . Some small bluegill and a 12" bass from the area in front of the drain under the road . The wind was very bad in the afternoon so I called it a day . Have been on vacation this week and fished as much as possible , seems the smaller bass { 12" - 16" } are feeding more and had a 2lb plus crappie break my line on a private lake Wed. Caught 2 more - one was 13" , the other was 14" . Several nice pound gill also on minnows . Crappie were in some wood ranging from 6" - 4' with most 2 foot range . Water temp was 81 dg , wind out of the north { oh well } , sunny skys . The wood in the water was also in the shade until 11:00 AM . Water temp at Otter Pit was 77 dg at most spots , water clarity is what I would cal " stained " . The pit is down but so is most every lake I have fished this month .

[Moose1am]

Check out the photo page on fishin.com for my photo.

[NFC]

As far as water levels being low goes, I have been fishin east of Elberfeld in the old Peabody pits and I've seen 2 smaller pits completely dry up. I even drove my truck out on what was a lake bed. Granted they weren't very deep to begin with maybe only 4 - 7 ft deep but still, I wouldn't have thought they would have dried up this fast, guess I was wrong. You can do the Google Earth program and follow Stanley Rd. east and there are photos of all the pits, 2 are gone now, that's pretty sad to me. I always say it doesn't matter how much folks talk about they need rain cause their grass is brown, they need to look at the lakes and see that they are extremely low. One pit I've been fishin, I have been parking where water should be, that is depressing.

Just my 2 cents

God 1st, Family 2nd and everyone else get in line . . .
A bad day of fishin is better than a good day at work . . .
NFC

[bassmanic1]

Check out the photo page on fishin.com for my photo.

Moose ,
Which one is yours ?

[Moose1am]

The one with the two columns of crappie each about five crappie deep. The one with the crappie laying on the bottom of my boat and the one with the crappie next to the ruler.

The only place we can post any pictures on this forum is in the photos forum.

I'll have to check and figure out exactly where I put them. LOL

Moose ,
Which one is yours ?

[Moose1am]

My picture is located on the photo Board. From the page on this site where it lists all the different state boards and the other boards like the hunting forum look for the one called Photo Board. I put my picture on there.

I did upload three different pictures and at one time yesterday all three were there but now only one of the three is showing up on my post.