NO, When Cumberland has very heavy rain in the spring time the Corp especially now since the lake is being held low is forced to dump HUGE amounts of water out of the dam. In doing so and if they can't keep up they will even open the Sluice gates on the bottom of the dam which pulls cold very oxgenated water from the bottom layers of the lake. The longer this goes on, the worse it is..Originally Posted by coombro
After this happens and is followed by a very hot year with little rain like last year the lake's lower depths ''WHERE STRIPERS AND WALLEYE'' want to be have very poor water to live in. Low O2 levels and warm water are a striper and walleye's nightmare. Both fish will stay in that water until they stress and eventually die. Bass and other species will move to find better water, but these two species will not. Juvenile Stripes alot of times will come up, but the mature fish are the ones usually lost, which are the ones we want not to loose. Rains especially cold ones in the summer or early fall are usually a good thing if they aren't too excessive. The rains last year came way too late and the damage was already done, they played almost no role in the die off, other than washing out some dead fish into the river and making Kendall smell really really bad. However if they did open the sluice gates it would have made matters a little worse but again according to Fish and Game the damage was already done.
This is the short version, and it's a little more complex than this but hopefully you get the idea. There are written articles and available information from the KDFWR that will explain in great detail, and they will tell you exactly what I have just typed pretty much.
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