Running KY Lake safely

[BabyHeuy]

Fishing from the dam down to fenton are there any dangerous area to watch for while on plane? Can you run close to shore on both the east and west side or are there areas where you should stay in the main river channel

thanks

[buzzking]

Run the river channel on the east side. 50' all the way to fenton. BUT if the wind is blowing, you can run the west side and it will be a lot smoother. I wouldn't recommend it until the lake gets to summer pool unless you have a HD navionics chip.

[hooksetter]

To run the west side up from KY Dam Villiage you must follow the channel marker bouys. They will swing you way out around Little Bear Creek and there is a reason for that, its a foot deep 300 yards out from the bank

[offdtop]

On the East side do not just roar into the coves, look at a map and notice that the channel will be on one side or another NOT BOTH, I must have seen as many as 5 boats this year beach their boats because of it - some of which did some nice damage. Like Vickers Bay for example the point on the north extends more than 3/4 the mouth of the opening of the bay and you have to go in on the south end BUT NOT ALL BAYS ARE THE SAME - if you go past Fenton to Block House Creek it is the opposite check your map. And like the others said know how the bouys work and follow them, when you get to the 3 mile island on the West side it gets tricky until you get past the mouth of Jonathan creek. Need more info PM me

[GeoFisher]

On the East side do not just roar into the coves, look at a map and notice that the channel will be on one side or another NOT BOTH, I must have seen as many as 5 boats this year beach their boats because of it - some of which did some nice damage. Like Vickers Bay for example the point on the north extends more than 3/4 the mouth of the opening of the bay and you have to go in on the south end BUT NOT ALL BAYS ARE THE SAME - if you go past Fenton to Block House Creek it is the opposite check your map. And like the others said know how the bouys work and follow them, when you get to the 3 mile island on the West side it gets tricky until you get past the mouth of Jonathan creek. Need more info PM me

Like my previous post about barkely............vickers has eaten a prop or two.......I hit it the first time out........Last day of my trip, and it DESTROYED my prop.

Luckly, I had a spare................

Bottom Line.......there are some serious sandbars and points out there.

Do you have to run..............if tourney, I can understand, but if not, why not just drive the trace to binginham and put in as pisqua or use sugar both are a little low, but MORE than useable.

Later,

Geo

[kc]

Running the main lake up the east side to Fenton there is really nothing dangerous that I can attest to aside from the navigation buoys themselves. That said I haven't fished below Pisgah to the dam but a few times so my knowledge of the lake is limited there. The river channel runs the east side so the deeper, safer water is there. However, as others pointed out there are shallow points and humps in many of the bay mouths. Vickers is one of the more extreme ones but Barnett has a big hump like that too as well as the North end of Higgins. The best bet is to pick up a map and get oriented to the deep and shallow water areas and when in doubt drop it down until you know the water. From a different perspective I have night fished north of Fenton for years and consider KY extremely safe to run provided that one knows the handful of points / bars that come out into the bays. I have had more issues dodging bouys than points and the most dangerous aspect of running KY lake is the wind...

kc