Patoka Update

[PL]

This past weekend I didn't fish either day. That was the first weekend since feb. that I didn't make it to the camp or Patoka. Had to work sat. for awhile and spent the rest of the day picking up leaves with the mower. Did the same sunday.

The previous weekend I did fish both days. That sat. I caught and released alot of smaller fish everywhere I went. Stayed on my main lake holes all day and scraped a limit of decent fish out. Caught most tightlinning minnows over and in deep cover. Moose will know where I was. I did catch alot of fish on jigs that day as well and some were real nice ones. Sunday one of my neighbors at the camp went out with me and we stayed in the lickfork area all day and went through many small rain showers off and on all day long. We each got a limit and some were right at 13" with many 10" to 11" in size and fat as heck. I caught my bigger ones on jigs that day and my neighbor caught all his on minnows. Water temp was 54 along with the air temp that day. I doubt if the water temp has changed much the past week. The crappie will make one last push to the shallows before heading back to deeper water for winter and I'm figuring on fishing everyday I can the next 3/4 weeks. They gotta eat just like we do. When the water temp gets in the low 40 degree range they should be on my main lake holes all winter long like they have the past 4/5 years and I'll be there when I can to take as many of them as I can home with me.

This past year has probably been one of the best I've ever had for crappie and bass. The more I fish Patoka the more I learn everyyear where to fish at the right times. I fish open water over deep cover most of the time for crappie. In the spring I start fishing shallow water when the temps hit the low 40 degree range and I use a 12' Sam Heaton rod with a 2" black/blue tube or a black/chartruse on a 1/16th jighead with a number 2 hook. Sometimes I'll put a small minnow on back if I get little or no action and I'll use a really bright solid yellow tube in real clear shallow water. They hammered that color many times this past spring in less that 2' of water when the water temp was well below 50.

I've got alot of other information on the way I fished the past 2 years especially the way and places I fished this past year for later posts. I'm thirsty and I'm going to fetch a cold one right now plus in-fisherman show is just coming on.

Take care and everyone have a great thanksgiving. If you haven't been to the Bass Pro in Clarksville get there and spend some money. They've already got way to much of mine.


Larry

[Moose1am]

Thanks for the update on Patoka Larry.

Good to see someone is catching them crappie up there.

I have the boat in the garage and have not fished much in the last month. Well I barely fished at all.

I have been getting my guns ready to hunt this fall.

I build a new portable shooting bench and had a new trigger installed on my rifle. I bought a range finder and a new scope for the rifle. The range finder is neat and I really needed one to help estimate how far out things are in order to figure how how far over the target I should hold to get a good hit.

I been spending my money at the new Gander Mountain Store here in Evansville. If BPS is larger then I have to see it someday as this store is huge as compared to all the other hunting/fishing stores down this way. It's not a BPS store but it's still nice and it's in my back yard. LOL

We had a young man drown in the pit where I fish. He fell out of his little john boat and tried to swim to shore. It's about a 70 yard to 100 yard swim and he was fully clothed and wearing long pants and coat I guess. They took several hours to find his body. That's sort of spooky as his boat was recovered not more than 40 yards from one of my main crappie fishing holes. I'll be that the State Police Divers who found his body were swimming around all my crappie out there. That lake will never be the same to me now!!!!!!!! I use to have to do that work when I was on the fire dept and it's totally gross. Dead bodies are limp and sometimes stiff and they somethings stink to high heaven. I was lucky in that the bodies I recovered were still fresh and had not been in the water very long. My next door neighbor works for the County Sheriff and he was there. The local DNR CO's were there as well as was one of the Vanderburgh County Volunteer Fire Depts.

If the muskie that they put in here grow and start bitting I'll give you a call and maybe you can come down here and help me catch a few. I have some big huge 12" long Muskie baits that my Dad purchased years ago when he went to Canada's ONTARIO Eagle Lake which had a good population of big muskie in it.

Well I have to get now. Got to go clean out the gutters before it rains tomorrow. Leaves are coming down in droves this year. That's good as I will only have to get up on the roof once or twice as compared to three or four times last year. Last year the came down a little bit here and then a little bit there. And I got tired of climbing up on the roof. I'm going to look at some new gutter guards to help keep the leaves out of the gutters. They are expensive but not as much as going to the hospital with a broken leg or back from falling off the roof. Only problem is that all the gutter guards I have tried already were worthless. They still clogged up with maple seeds or the leaves each spring and fall.

Take care and enjoy eating them crappie.

I told you about the nice 12" crappie I was catching at Otter Pit. I must have caught about 5 or 6 of them 12" and 12.5" crappie that one day. It's a new spot that's produces nicely. And the local CO is fishing at the other end of the lake in a similar type spot. I have not figured out exactly where he caught the nice crappie he said he caught. I don't' fish that end of the lake very much. But I will check him out the next time I see him on the spot. Now that I have my range finder and GPS I can pinpoint any fishing boat out on the water that's within 500 yards of me. LOL All I need is an angle and a distance and I can project a new waypoint from where I am standing holding my GPS. My only problem with my gps Garmin Vista is that is range is in MILES. Grrrrrrrrr. You would think that they would let you project a new waypoint using ft or meters as the distance from your spot to the new spot. Garmin Sure screwed up there. I may need a new gps I can't get the accuracy I need using 100th of a mile as the distance of the new vector.

Shoot. Yesterday I got into Trig again. I was trying to figure out what MOA or minutes of Arc meant. That led me to get out three math learning computer programs and three of my old math books. All it did was convince me that I will never really truly understand Trigonometry as well as I should. But I found out that all i really need to know is that the Arc Length of a 1 minute arc of angle at 100 yards is approx ONE INCH. So when they talk about Sub MOA groupings they mean the bullets all hit within less than 1 inch of each other at 100 yards range. That's a pretty tight group of shots. You need a good rifle and scope plus a rock steady bench to shoot that good.

I got me a new Tack-Driver shooting bag to put the rifle on and to hold it steady while shooting at targets. I can't wait to get the gun out and get it zeroed in really good.

You be careful out there on that big lake when the water's cold. I fell into the lake this summer and had a hell of a time catching my boat as the wind was blowing it away faster than I could swim. Luckily it blew against the shoreline and I was in shallow water and I had my life jacket on. The only thing I lost was my balance and my radio headphones. I saved my rod and reel and my eyeglasses. It must have been funny to watch from a distance if anyone saw me. I was in the front of the boat and trying to get around the bass chair and ran into the **** chair which knocked me off balance. I walked the entire length of the Port Railing until I got to the other end of the boat. I could not catch my balance and was trying not to step on the rods that I store along that side of the boat. I would rather fall out than break a rod. So I ended up actually jumping off the back end of the boat and into the water. I knew if I fell into the boat I could break my neck. I'll fall into the warm water any day before I fall into the boat in an awkward position. The water was nice an warm and it was only about 7 ft deep there. I found that it's harder to swim with the big life jacket on than without one because of the drag. I would have had a long walk if the boat had gotten away from me. As I ended up on an island and would have had to swim across a short channel and then walk about 2 miles back around the lack to get to my truck.

So you be careful out there with that cold water. The water was about 80 deg F when I fell in this summer. Water at 50 deg F will take your breath away and sap your energy very fast. You won't last more than 5 minutes in that chilly water. And when it gets down into the 40's you can loose heat much faster. So wear a life jacket. Get one of them new ones that inflates automatically when you hit the water. They are comfortable and can save your life. Patoka is big and if you are all by yourself and it's windy the boat can move over the water faster than you can swim. Even if you could swim to shore in the summertime you won't be able to swim very far in that cold water. I need a ladder for my boat now. I climbed back into my boat using the lower unit on my motor and by grabbing onto the motor cowling. It's not easy getting back into the boat when all wet. And I was wearing sandals, T shirt and shorts. Imagine that poor young man trying to swim in cold water wearing bluejeans and a long sleeve shirt and or jacket.

This past weekend I didn't fish either day. That was the first weekend since Feb. that I didn't make it to the camp or Patoka. Had to work sat. for awhile and spent the rest of the day picking up leaves with the mower. Did the same Sunday.

The previous weekend I did fish both days. That sat. I caught and released alot of smaller fish everywhere I went. Stayed on my main lake holes all day and scraped a limit of decent fish out. Caught most tightlinning minnows over and in deep cover. Moose will know where I was. I did catch alot of fish on jigs that day as well and some were real nice ones. Sunday one of my neighbors at the camp went out with me and we stayed in the lickfork area all day and went through many small rain showers off and on all day long. We each got a limit and some were right at 13" with many 10" to 11" in size and fat as heck. I caught my bigger ones on jigs that day and my neighbor caught all his on minnows. Water temp was 54 along with the air temp that day. I doubt if the water temp has changed much the past week. The crappie will make one last push to the shallows before heading back to deeper water for winter and I'm figuring on fishing everyday I can the next 3/4 weeks. They gotta eat just like we do. When the water temp gets in the low 40 degree range they should be on my main lake holes all winter long like they have the past 4/5 years and I'll be there when I can to take as many of them as I can home with me.

This past year has probably been one of the best I've ever had for crappie and bass. The more I fish Patoka the more I learn every year where to fish at the right times. I fish open water over deep cover most of the time for crappie. In the spring I start fishing shallow water when the temps hit the low 40 degree range and I use a 12' Sam Heaton rod with a 2" black/blue tube or a black/chartreuse on a 1/16th jig head with a number 2 hook. Sometimes I'll put a small minnow on back if I get little or no action and I'll use a really bright solid yellow tube in real clear shallow water. They hammered that color many times this past spring in less that 2' of water when the water temp was well below 50.

I've got alot of other information on the way I fished the past 2 years especially the way and places I fished this past year for later posts. I'm thirsty and I'm going to fetch a cold one right now plus in-fisherman show is just coming on.

Take care and everyone have a great thanksgiving. If you haven't been to the Bass Pro in Clarksville get there and spend some money. They've already got way to much of mine.


Larry

[topwater2007]

Patoka Larry,

I was down there at the end of October and seen a lot of stripers dead and seen a pod up in the rocks and couldn't get them to bite. I called the DNR and they said they had a kill off when the lake turned over due to the lack of oxygen level in the lake this summer was too hot and low oxygen.

It wasn't a total kill off of course, but a concern non-the-less.

We caught some good bass on the main lake, but nothing up in the arms and coves which I was baffled why they weren't up in the coves.

Anyway, I will fish the lake again next year.

[skeeter sf150sx]

I heard from a striper guide at poor boys that the state came in and did some kind of survay on the stripers. I don't know if the netted them or shocked them or what but they did handle them in some way which stressed alot of strippers out and ended up killing them. I went up ther the first weekend in october and was dodging strippers left and right when running from one spot to another. They were floating all over the main lake. It wasn't because the water turned over to fast. or we would of seen other speices of fish floating.

[small boat basser]

Wasn't the DNR. It was a combination of the summer drought combined with low D.O. during the turnover. Same thing happened at the same time on Monroe with the hybrids. Hybrids and stripers have very particular water conditions they need to survive. They need high D.O. and cool water temperatures. When they can't get them they suffer. It happens...

[raporter]

Wasn't the DNR. It was a combination of the summer drought combined with low D.O. during the turnover. Same thing happened at the same time on Monroe with the hybrids. Hybrids and stripers have very particular water conditions they need to survive. They need high D.O. and cool water temperatures. When they can't get them they suffer. It happens...

This is a common occurance with stripers in lakes like Patoka.

[topwater2007]

It wasn't because the water turned over to fast. or we would of seen other speices of fish floating.

Skeeter, I guess you couldn't understand what I was trying to say. I called the DNR biologist and I was told that there was a partial striper kill in Cecil Harden, Monroe, and Patoka.

This was caused when the lake turned over. NOT because it turned over too fast, but because of the hot summer, the lower level under the thermocline had no oxygen in it. When these lakes turned over, it caused a low oxygen shortage in the entire water column.

Stripers and hybrids have a low tolerance of a lack of oxygen. That is why you didn't see the largemouth and catfish die off.

I hope that clarified the post that I made. The DNR is not in the business of mishandling fish and causing attrocities.

Anyway, Patoka is one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever fished, due to the government owning the land all around. I liked it.

[psprowler]

Hey Larry while you were out in the rain on Sunday I was up at the creek in the rain wearing them out on the float'n'fly. I got 10 total including a 19 inch smallmouth. The saturday before I got 3 back at the quarry best was a 17.25 incher. You're ready for some float'n'fly aren't you? I know Dustin is.

[PL]

Since dustin got married I think he's got a case of that hen pecked disease. Seems he don't have much time to go fishing......chuckle chuckle

I was going today but it's raining outside right now. Maybe it'll move though soon and I can hit the lake for a little while. Lots of nice smallmouth in patoka and I've never tried the Float&Fly there. We talked about doing it but never have. We are going to make it to the ISC show this time. Last year we had to work day and night.

Larry

Hey Larry while you were out in the rain on Sunday I was up at the creek in the rain wearing them out on the float'n'fly. I got 10 total including a 19 inch smallmouth. The saturday before I got 3 back at the quarry best was a 17.25 incher. You're ready for some float'n'fly aren't you? I know Dustin is.