Patoka

[raporter]

Ahhh...did not know that! Never fished it before so wasn't up to snuff! Do they reproduce there??

I heard that rumor too. Don't really know if it is anything other than that. The stripers do not reproduce in Patoka. Got an email from Dan Carnahan(District biologist) and he said they had lost almost all the stripers at the hatchery. May be some lean times for a while.

I did almost catch the grandslam of bass today. Caught some largemouths, a striper, a white bass and a yellow bass. All I needed was one smallie but just couldn't find one. Also caught several nice crappie.

[ugglyotter]

Thanks raporter

[ElectricSLT]

Raporter - did he mention what happen to the stripers? That is too bad to lose the hatchery stripers.

I can't seem to catch those brown fish at Patoka - I have had buddies in my boat catch em - but they won't bite what I've been throwing...

[fishNnut]

Raporter - did he mention what happen to the stripers?

They died from a virus.

[skore50]

I used to have a place in the wildridge rv resort at Patoka and would fish the lake many times over the summer months. Yes there were some big stripers in Patoka. In 2007 I caught one weighing 20 lbs, 5 ozs. Got a picture of it and will post it if my daughter will come and show me how. I had a 6" bluegill on each of four rods. What a blast

[Moveon]

I used to have a place in the wildridge rv resort at Patoka and would fish the lake many times over the summer months. Yes there were some big stripers in Patoka. In 2007 I caught one weighing 20 lbs, 5 ozs. Got a picture of it and will post it if my daughter will come and show me how. I had a 6" bluegill on each of four rods. What a blast

Steve the picture of your fish is on your facebook page. Just search facebook for your name and you will see the picture as your profile picture. There are several Steve XXXXXX names in the list when I googled your name. But it's easy to figure out which one is you as the picture shows your 20 lb striper. Not many guys have a picture of a 20 lb striper in the facebook profile picture. Nice fish.

I have a friend that's had a camp at the WildRidge RV Resort up at Newton Stewart and he's fished Patoka since it was first filled up. He would drive around the camp in a Golf Cart with his Dog Bandit. A little black and white Shitshoe. SP? My friend's name is Larry. I bet you have seen him around the lake in his Crestliner Boat out there fishing. He has a Mercy 150 HP motor on the back of his boat.

I talked to Larry on the phone today while he was out fishing on Patoka Lake. He caught some nice largemouth bass in the warm waters. They were up in the stumps. He also caught some nice crappie too. But there are so many little 8" crappie in the lake that you have to wade though them to get a big one worth keeping. He didn't clean any crappie so he could not see any eggs. I asked him to keep a few next time and check on the eggs to check for the spawn time. He did say that the water temp where he fished was in the lower 60's and it was at the surface. It was colder a few feet below the surface. He has a meter that he can lower down into the water and measure the temperature and various depths.

[skore50]

I think that's great that my picture with my striper is out there. Turned it loose. sometimes I wish I had put it on my wall but I didn't. And that's okay but I do have the picture for all eternity.
That fish on the wall-could have been anybody's. My picture holding that fish-eliminates some doubt about who caught it.

ONE OF THE BEST 12-15 MINUTES OF MY LIFE

[Moveon]

You can copy that picture from the web to your computer and then save it to a USB thumb drive and take it to some place like Walmart and have them print it out in a large print and then hang it up on your wall at home.

I think that's great that my picture with my striper is out there. Turned it loose. sometimes I wish I had put it on my wall but I didn't. And that's okay but I do have the picture for all eternity.
That fish on the wall-could have been anybody's. My picture holding that fish-eliminates some doubt about who caught it.

ONE OF THE BEST 12-15 MINUTES OF MY LIFE

[Moveon]

Ray Rigby fishes for small mouth bass and I hear he is really good at catching them. I fished a Purdue University College Bass Fishing Tournament on time back in the early 2000's. Ray fished and won the tournament with a 6 lb smallie. It was a day of bluebird skies and a cold front had just come though that morning. I was wearing long pants and a heavy jacket that morning in the parking lot during the pre game meeting. It was so cold I could see my own breath in the cold early morning chair. I has my brand new Garmin eTrex GPS with a digital map of Patoka lake on it. The little screen was hard to see as it was only about 1.5" or so wide and tall. I had to zoom in and zoom out to see the contour details. We launched out of Painter's Creek Ramp and that was my first time in this area. It was foggy and hard to see the shoreline at launch time. I was the boater for this college kid from Purdue. This was about as far South as they went for the Purdue College Bass Fishing Club and they had a hard time finding boaters. So I volunteered. The kids were suppose to help with gas but my kid never offered to help pay for any gas or anything else. I don't think he even thanked me. Last time I do the volunteer bit for them. Anyway I got him on a fish and it was about 1/4" short. But we find some fish in the very last Bay near the Mouth of the creek. It took all morning to fish out to this point in the **** fog. I was not going to head out into the main lake in the fog as there was not way to see other boats. Now these days with my Humminbird 898C Si unit and the Lakemaster Map on the screen and a better GPS system I would venture out of the bay before the fog lifted but carefully. I fished Cypress Bay on KY Lake at the TN/KY boarder on the West side of the lake and would take off from the launch ramp and hug the shoreline until we got out to the mouth of the bay/creek. We would fish the island and the submerged stump beds on the inside and outside edge of the little island and then the little bay to the right and up river a bit. There was a nice drop off channel that came out of the TN river and into this little cove and the drop off at the very end of the island dropped into this 15 ft deep creek channel. There were three large tree stumps that were marked with iron poles that we would target with crank baits and man did we catch some nice largemouth bass on that spot. The stumps were right on the top ledge next to the drop off and depending on the time of year and water levels were great spots for some nice big bass. Top water worked in this area during the low water periods and in the summer months a crank bait bounced off the stump would get a reaction strike almost every morning. Then there were about 5 boat docks on this tiny bay which we fished thoroughly every morning. As the sun came up and the fog lifted we would head downriver to the Shannon Creek area and fish the Hot spot which was a similar spot to the little bay we had left. There too was a small creek running though the end of an island that lead into the South end of Shannon Creek. The only way into this area at low water times was though the creek and then the creek didn't always go straight on into the deeper water areas further north. The main way to get into this area was from the Northern Entrance where Shannon Creek is marked with COE marker buoys We fished that area and that part of the creek a lot too. But after fishing the hot spot. The hot spot had metal 3" diameter poles driven into the bottom near stumps. We would go upwind and cut the motor and drift back though the area with the three poles sticking out of the water. We would fan cast the area with crank baits (bombers) and catch lots of bass. The area was another classic fishing spot. A creek channel running though the end of an island with the drop off into the creek. The ledge was formed at the end of the island and the creek channel. And the creek meandered though this area for a few hundred feet. I tried to follow this creek a few times into the South end of the Shannon Creek area but had a hard time staying in the deeper water. I nearly always ran into 2 ft of water depth and had to stop and go back the way I can for fear of getting stuck on the mud flat. Maybe the creek channel had silted in over the years. Now if I could have gotten though the shallow water area I would have been into the main back section of Shannon Creek and had plenty of deep water to navigate though. But the only way to reach that water was from the Northern end of the island not the South End. I had to go back out the Southern creek and back onto the main lake and the Eastern Side of the Islands and head up north a ways on the outside of the islands. There were three of them IIRC. And then cut into the Northern End of the Northern Most Island and then go into the Marked channel into Shannon Creek. This area also had some stumps along the edge of the creek channel that are great fishing spots and we caught many a bass and Sauger at this fishing spots. Drop offs next to the creek channel. Dad had found and fished these spots many years before I started going with him to the lake. He and his buddy use to come home with big stringers full of LM bass. I'm not sure how they figured out these spots in the days before GPS unit, Side scanning Sonar Units, Digital Mapping of the Lake but they did. The old guys used to use a weight and a string as their depth finders and I guess they figured out somehow that the bass like to setup on drop offs and points. That's what I learned as a young kid when fishing down there. But I read a lot of fishing magazines as a teenager. I wanted to learn more about bass fishing and I wanted to know why the fish were where they were. I studied fishing facts magazine articles and read books on the subject of bass fishing. Lucas on Bass Fishing was one such book that I finally got around to reading. He preceded Buch Perry. I read most of his book but didn't finish it yet. It got boring and repetitive from the 2017 point of view. It's all old stuff now that I've read before in other books. But the point is that I learned to fish at KY lake and this was Patoka Lake and I didn't know this lake like I knew KY lake. And any lake that I fish I won't go out in the fog without hugging the shoreline until the fog lifts. Maybe if I had radar and could see other boats in the fog and the shoreline and had a dependable detailed contour map of the lake showing the river channels in detail and the creek channels. But the smart move is to hug the shoreline and stay safe.

But the time the fog lifted to the sunny skies the fish were developing a case of sever lock jaw. Jay Rigsby was the only guy to bring in a fish that was weighted in IIRC. He won the day with the 6 lb smallie and that was the first time I had met him. So if you want to catch some smallies at Patoka I recommend you talk to him. He might be nice and give you some tips. Last I heard he started his own web site and or form that talks about Small Mouth Bass Fishing. The second thing I would advise it to buy and read the Critical Concepts Book about Small Mouth Bass Fishing from In-Fisherman. They have several good books on fishing for different species of fish. LM bass, Small mouth Bass, Walleye, Muskie, Catfish etc, I have the book crappie wisdom and then two of the crappie critical concepts books that I've read. I have the small mouth bass book too. But I've never really tried to target smallies on Patoka Lake. My father would fish for smallies on the Panther Creek area of KY lake. Those rocky shorelines are prime small mouth bass areas at certain times of the years. We didn't get to fish that side of the lake very often as we fished out of little rental boats for many years and could not really cross the lake when the wind was up and the lake was full of white caps and 4 ft rollers. We were lucky to get out of Cypress bay and up to Shannon Creek sticking to the West Side of the lake. I use to wonder if I could make it to shore if the boat ever capsized? But if you didn't stay in the River Channel or the Creek Channel you might hit a stump and sink the boat or take the motor out. So we stayed in the marked area well out from the shore line. It would have been a very long swim if we had to swim for shore. I know now that I would have not made it back then at that young age of 8 to 18 years old. But as I got older I started swimming for exercise and built myself up to the point were I would swim a mile every day as I was a life guard and had access to the lake. I had to build myself up to that distance by swimming every day and adding a few laps in the pool each day until I got my body conditioned to swim a mile's distance. That took me a month to do. And I stopped smoking in the process. I started sometime after Christmas break and built up to the mile distance by April. By May of 1972 I was back home at the lake working as a life guard again and swimming a mile every day during my half hour break from the life guard chair. We worked 1/2 hr on the chair and then 1/2 hr off the chair. We had to work during our breaks but a few time we were allow to have some fun and I would either get my mile swim in in less than 30 minutes or spend some time on the diving boards which I loved to do. That or swim out to the trapeze dock and do some swings on the trapeze for 20 minutes. Then it was back to the chair to watch the kids to make sure that no one drown. I made a few swimming saves over the 9 years that I was a life guard. I also had to testify in court for a few cases where a swimmer got injured at the lake and tried to sue the owner of the lake. They did not recover any money from the owner due to my testimony. They were goofing off on the trapeze dock and the girls brother pushed her off the platform before she was ready to go. So the judge ruled in our favor not the plaintive. I remember saving the girl from drowning as she had a injured right hand. And I remember treating her hand for the injuries and stopping the bleeding with direct pressure and bandaging the wound. We have a big metal pipe that was bent into the shape of a big hook. There was a rope tied to the end of the hook and the hook was thrown out to catch the trapeze and bring it back to the platform where the people were waiting to swing out on the trapeze. The hook was still attacked to the trapeze bar when the girl was hanging onto the trapeze waiting to go. That's when her older brother pushed her off the platform. She hung onto the trapeze and was swimming out over the water when the hook slide over into her hand on the trapeze bar and cut her right hand. She fell off the trapeze and landed awkwardly and I had to do a swimming rescue and call for the rescue boat to get her back to shore and into the first Aid Room. There we attended to her hand and called the ambulance to take her to the hospital. She ended up getting surgery on her hand to repair the gash wound. The trapeze was a dangerous place to play. If you swung out and failed to let go and swung back towards the concrete dock you could have gotten killed if you lost your gripe on the way back to the dock. That was one of my main fears when I first started using the trapeze. And you would not believe how many girls would forget to drop at the end of the trapeze swing out over the lake and let go on the way back and almost crash into the edge of the concrete dock. Those times it made the hair on my back stand up as I would have been the one responsible for getting them out of the water safely. Thankfully during my time on the deep water chair no one was seriously hurt other than the one girls hand. We never had any one drown at the lake I worked at for 9 years. The other commercial swimming lake in our area has several people die from drowning. But we had a very well worked out safety system and back up for our life guards. We practiced different rescue situations several times each week and were a well oiled team. We had scuba gear on hand and several of the life guards were Water Safety Instructors as well as life guard. We had a john boat an hand to help with rescues and then we used rescue tubes when they were invented and became into vogue in our area. We were a few years behind the lifeguards that serve the ocean areas on the West Coast. But we had a good system. I started working at this lake as a life guard the second year it was open for business. And to this day I'm still good friends with the owner and her son. It was a nice place to take the family to go swimming and to have a picnic. There was even a smaller fishing lake that I use to utilize quite often. There were some huge blue gills in this lake that would spawn in the shallow waters. I would take m fly rod out there and practice fly fishing. I had my dads Old BAMBO fly rod out there one day. It was a very slow rod as it's made out of spit bamboo. I still have it today. But I had to lean how to fly fish by myself and figured it out the hard way. The back cast caught the fly on a tree limb behind me and when I went forward the rod broke. I tried to glue the rod back but it's never been the same again. But I learned to fly fish with that until I finally broke down and bought my own fly rod. First it was a glass rod and then later I bough a few more graphite fly rods that I still use today. I caught some nice big fat bluegill and learned to sight fish. I put them all back as it was a catch and release thing. But it was a lot of fun. I still like to break out the fly fishing gear and head over to the lake to try my luck.

Raporter - did he mention what happen to the stripers? That is too bad to lose the hatchery stripers.

I can't seem to catch those brown fish at Patoka - I have had buddies in my boat catch em - but they won't bite what I've been throwing...