Reply With QuoteDon't worry .... Be Happy!. At least you got to get out on the water and enjoy the outdoors. That to me is the best part of fishing.
Patoka is more of a High Land Type of Lake as opposed to a Low Land Lake like KY Lake. IMHO. The water at Patoka is more clear as compared to KY lake and the fish stay a little bit deeper due to more sunlight penetration though the clearer water.
Find some grass or submergent vegetation and you will find some fish. Find the edge of the grass bed on a breakline and if there are some breaks (stumps or big rocks) you will probably find some fish at some time during the day or year.
If you are a deep water fishermen and use heavy jigs or big worms crawled along the bottom then there are some good spots on Patoka that should hold some big schools of big bass.
Did you have a Topographic Map or Hydro-graphic map of Patoka Lake? Do you use GPS for locating spots? I've got a friend that has all that stuff plus a Side Scanning Sonar Unit Humminbird 1198 and he still just fishes from memory. He has his maps memorized and uses land based shoreline objects to triangulate his spots. He both and old time fishermen and a modern day fisherman. Of course he lives at the lake during the warm weather months as he has two trailers at the trailer park at the entrance to Newton Stewart. He fishes during the week and parties on his pontoon boat on the weekends with his family. That way he doesn't have to fight with the waves from speed boats pulling water skiers and jet skies racing around the lake. One good thing about Patoka Lake is that there are lots of fingers up the rivers and creeks that feed the lake that are 10 mph speed limit controlled and full of underwater stumps that keeps people from water skiing in these areas. However you still get some Yahoo going 60 mph in his bass boat with the 300 HP motor on the back. That his until his lower unit runs into one of those big underwater stumps and destroys his motor and throws him out of the boat into the water. I Love it when that happens to stupid idiots who ignore the rules and think that they can get by with doing anything they wish dispite the danger. The get what they deserve.My friend likes to fish the shallow water in the back of the bays. Wow, I just remembered that's where I always fished when I went down to KY lake. You just have to be quiet and not make noise in the boat that can travel into the water. Fish in shallow water are more spooky than those in deeper water.
Now as for Large Mouth Bass. I've caught them in the shallow grass just off the River Channel and South of the Long Point that on the land next to the Dam. I saw that long point of land in a photo and it's a very long point that goes all the way out to the old River Channel. This is an area where the River meanders quite a bit though the deeper waters of the lake out away from the Dam. I've also caught bass in the standing timber. Good luck finding that spot as the lake is chock full of all types of standing timbers. But it was in about 20 ft of water and I tossed a texas rigged worm out and let it sink down along the tree and hit the bottom. That's not easy to do in an among the trees. I was fishing what appeared to be the edge of the wood line. The Corp cut some of the trees down before the lake filled but they didn't get a lot of trees as the lake filled up faster than they expected it to back in ca. 1977/78. So the upper reaches from the I-145 bridge to King's Bridge is full of stumps and standing timber that's flooded.
The Fishing Hot Spots Map is probably the best thing for a guy like you to get. It will show you about 37 different fishing spots for Patoka Lake and gives a description of what to use for bait and what species are present in each spot. Anyone new to Patoka Lake should buy and use one of those maps if not a good digital map of Patoka.
Lake Master has a good detailed digital map of Patoka lake that works some of the Humminbird Combo Depth Finders. And Navionics makes digital maps for Patoka Lake that works on Humminbird and Lawrence Devices.
Originally Posted by Atomdata
