Cumberland Dead Fish

[stripernut]

came across the dam on our way back from dale hollow just about an hour ago and we could see dead fish floating evrywhere again. got the binoculars out of the boat and looked and it looked like most of them were walleye, hard to tell for sure, but some were pretty big, maybe too big for walleye. going down this evening to look around, i had hoped this crap was over.

[peter]

Give us an update when you can, please.
Peter

[cinfan99]

came across the dam on our way back from dale hollow just about an hour ago and we could see dead fish floating evrywhere again. got the binoculars out of the boat and looked and it looked like most of them were walleye, hard to tell for sure, but some were pretty big, maybe too big for walleye. going down this evening to look around, i had hoped this crap was over.

Oh no... I'm heading there Thu-Sun with my dad to fish for LM/SM. This is our first trip to LC. Sounds like we may have bad timing. I've been following the other posts and was hopeful that the worst had past. Keep us posted.

[stripernut]

cinfan, not sure how much your heart is set on cumberland, but we absolutely clobbered the big magnum spots on dale hollow today, granted we caught them on live crayfish....but you could have caught them just as well with finesse worms and tubes. the lm/sm are still kind of dodgy on cumberland, the fish being brought into 2 local weekly tournaments are poor looking, usually 4-7 lbs wins the tournament.

Now for the dead fish situation; 39 very dead walleye , and 8 very dead stripers plus 2 stripers floundering on the surface, i watched em pop up to the surface and picked them both up, both were 25 inchers. this was from rowena to the dam both sides and down the middle. This seems like alot less than we saw this morning when we crossed the dam, i dont know if they blew over to the banks, sunk, got pulled through the gates at the dam????? water temps a steady 80 degrees this evening, we are getting there, just not fast enough.

p.s. cinfan, if you do decide on cumberland check your pm

[JoeB]

I think (hope) it's about over. The surface temp has cooled about 7 degrees in the last couple of weeks and most of the stripers have moved up out of that deep un-oxygenated water. Even seeing keepers on the surface feeding now. The striper fishing this past week has actually been very good. Not huge fish, but lots of keepers. I have marked some huge schools of fish this week. We took a hard hit, but there are still a lot of good stripers in the lake.

The walleye will be fine too. Every year the walleye go through a die off on some parts of the lake. This year will be bigger than most, but it happens almost every year. Hopefully the COE will give us another 10 ft of water next year. (fingers crossed, but not holding breath)

[stripernut]

i agree joe, i think the worst is over. as for the walleye its amazing to think how many walleye there are in the lake, every year theres a kill, then the next year you catch the fire out of them.....and then theres another kill and so on and so on. it was 90 degrees this afternoon in russell springs and we dont need that, we need 75 daytime and 55 night time, its on the way though. i marked a couple of schools this evening about 40 ft , big schools actually, right under bait, so this shows they are not stressed to the point that they wont feed....which is what the biologist that were down every morning last week were concerned about, they talked like the damage from the stress could show up for some time, but these were feeding fish, i could watch the trails up and down on the graph.

[cinfan99]

p.s. cinfan, if you do decide on cumberland check your pm

??? Didn't see a pm, but would appreciate any advice you have. We will be launching out of JRM.