I did not know so many people looked for my reports. I did post one for Corinth Lake yesterday but did not post one for Ky and Barkley for last week with Chunknwind and myself. From what I saw that other people reported, all I would have been doing was saying the same things. We scheduled the trip back in January for the same week that we KILLED them on last year. Last year we stayed on South Kentucky and ended up fishing North Barkley, this year we stay on North Kentucky and end up fishing all over Kentucky. Barkley was a mudhole when we got there on Saturday the 12th. We fished it for a couple of hours and took out and put in at Sugar Bay. Long story short, we launched out of Sugar and another ramp on the LBL Ky side south of Fenton, Ken Lake, Shawnee Bay and Moors, plus Denumbers and Poplar Creek and some other ramp in Mid Barkley on the LBL side in Barkley over the week. We never put in and stayed in at one ramp any one day. We literally tried everything we knew to find the bigger fish but even Dave Stewart struggled this week to find the bigger fish. If Dave is not on them, then nobody is on them. I was down there the first of April and the water was 58 degrees and 2 feet above summer pool, we show up and it is 58 degrees and 3 feet above and had went down during my absense. Tough conditions for everyone. The BFL or maybe the FLW, whichever it was that launched out of the Moores that Saturday had half the field come in with Skunk or 1 fish, and the 20lb bag that won it was caught 40 miles south on Ky. We dinked around all week and with the exception of me catching a 4-9 on a hump in the middle of Ky Lake that I found using longitude and latitude minutes and Cliff holding the boat in 3-4 footers, this was the big fish of the week. I had a 12 fish lead for the week heading into the next to last day and Cliff catches 10 in less than an hour when we caught them in the jumps busting shad early on Thursday. He was using a Red Eye Shad rattle trap and this was the only bait they would hit. I retied 14 times in an hour from 3 different traps, cranks, spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, pop r's and such and ended up catching 1 keeper on a jerkbait after all the fun had stopped (fun for him that was). 120lb of tackle, 13 different planos packed full and I could not find a bait for them. We were tied going into Friday and he beat me by 3 and even with the 2 I lost at the boat would have lost the numbers game for the week (I chalk it up to me being in the back of the boat, him getting the first shot at all of them and believe it is a credit to my fishing talent that I was able to make it a close match even with all the dis-advantages that I had against me) As my wife would say "Whatever it takes", which means whatever excuses I need to tell myself to make it better on me, but the bottom line is I GOT WAXXED by Mr. Henson. Cliff did stick a 10+lb Drum that we never saw until she laid in the net that had visions of grandure dancing in his head, photo op - dry ice - taxidermy man, then all those dreams came to a screaching halt. The fish never jumped and was just ouside the buck brush right where she should have been getting ready to spawn. I will tell one on me. Cliff gets his Red Eye Shad hung up and since it is the only thing fish are biting, out comes the lure retriever. Chunk ask how in the world does these things work (I never use mine and we have the exact same one but I do know how they are supposed to work). I take the retriever and I am giving play by play analysis of what to do as I hook it over the line then I toss it overboard - All of it overboard, not keeping the reel part in the boat so to the bottom his BRAND NEW retriever sinks. He says aren't you supposed to keep part of that and then it hits me. We are laughing at my stupidity and I tell him that I just proved that I never use my own much less his. We luck out in that the retriever does its job and then hangs up on the lure and Cliff reels in both the lure and retriever. Very funny. We went to fish North Barkley and got a total of about 7 hours on this water and spent the rest of the time in Kentucky except for a few hours in Mid Barkley on the LBL side. Struggled all week like most others did, Sat-Sun-Mon needed full winter gear, thought I was at Dale Hollow in January and forgot my FNF rod, Tue started cold and stripped layers as the day went on, Thur and Fri was short weather all day long. Fish were in total confusion, at least this is what we found. Lizard bite early in the week, Crankbait bite middle of the week, and red eye shad dominated the last couple of days. I even threw a King Shad Swim Bait out in front of the Buck Brush on Friday and was catching 8" fish on a 4" swim bait sort of summed up the week. We leave on Friday around noon or so and from what I heard the cloud cover rolled in and the big girls started biting shortly thereafter. Figures our luck to spend 168 hours there with about 80 of these actually on the water and fished this one particular bay 2 different days to catch noting but shorties and then they bust open as we are halfway back to Lexington. We will head back down next year and try it again for a week, but I get to have 4 more days of it with my son and wife the first week of May. Maybe then the water will be normal.
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Originally Posted by stratosjoe
