Still fishing. Having to accomplish things at home and transporting kids, work etc, sure gets in the way of fishing. Keep getting fish in the winter, and it is just like potato chips, you can't stop at one. What I need at this time of year is good excuses, an extremely low profile, and distractions for my wife. Have been laughing at some of the things going on across the musky boards lately. Funny stuff. The bizarre always heats up at this time of year and will keep on cooking till spring. I get to fish while all those other poor northerners get to do the yearning and longing. I won't be able to snatch more than a couple days until after New Years now, too many other committments eating time. Have a big backlog of baits I have decided to clear out but have not got the technology to post them up yet. My son is a little more computer litterate, and hope to commission him to get some up to sell. Maybe one more day before New years. My wife and I are both from big families and Thanksgiving and Christmas always end up in long trips, and no fishing.

Hmm, pimping all the northern guys about the cold weather but we have had a massive high sit down on us in the south too. It doesn't improve fishing. After this weekend I am booked next 11/14 days and my schedule gets tougher for fishing, and I have to start watching lake and weather reports to get a decent day. After working hard for a minimum of action Sunday, in what appeared to be good conditions, switched lakes and raised a few and caught a few over Monday and Tuesday. 40" might have been the top one seen doing a blow bye. Gets to be a challenge to fish with consistent results as the water cools, but they still get active and still bite. It will be an interesting winter this year. Hope the water stays stable.

The THEORY
Warm front moving in with low pressure, clouds and rain.
Water temps Stable
Moon full.
Water level stable with minimal discharge.
Fish will jump in the boat, fishing so easy Slamr could catch TWO.

THE FACT
Warm front moving in with low pressure, clouds and rain.
Water temps stable.
Moon Full.
The dam keeper must be on vacation and the reports of stable water level are MUCH exaggerated! Dang it is down another 6 inches and must be draining now because it is sucking all the fish out of the lake.
Caught two by pounding and pounding, one legal sized, one undersized and one more fat short one seen coming behind the bait.
Tough day in the weather.
SLAMR COULD HAVE CAUGHT TWO IF HE'D GONE BELOW THE DAM WITH A BIG DIP NET, IN FACT HE PROBABLY COULD HAVE CAUGHT 3!!


On a side note the KY firearm season for deer opened yesterday. On the way to the lake this morning see a good sized forkhorn running across very open pastures to jump the fence, cross the road and take off through another wide open pasture. Must have been a little desparate to cross that much open ground, long way between woodlots where he was. Tough season to be a deer I guess.

Clouds, no rain but pretty close, mist. Got fish early and went to try some new/different areas hoping to prove it out with an active bite. Not a very rewarding strategy. no more action and think I went through too much time, and when I finally got back to known fish waters, had one bite, but saw two more fish. Dropping water at !/2" and the middle section on the east was goopy dark. Third fish of the year out of a 20 foot square area. No giants. Caught first fish of the fall off a low stump, notable because it normally takes dark or goopy water before they position on these. Lately lots of turkeys flying across the coves. Those are big buggers. Saw a sick fish coming toward me today, and directly after this had biggest fish of the year follow bait into boat from same direction. Don't know if the big fish was connected to the baits "sickness" , hmmm...

Good fortune ran out with bright bright sunshine today. Got word that Green River sucked over the weekend and can verify that it is stable down there(it still sucks). The lake has started the turnover process and clarity really took a hit since 4 days ago. I don't think that is as much to blame for no action as is the cloudless weather. I moved one fish today and believe the only reason that fish moved was out of annoyance when I ran a bait past it's stick. Interesting thing today was that I saw TWO schools of White bass in two different coves. There used to be historically a large white bass population on this lake with fall and winter jumps on shad but I have only seen one jump in all the time I have fished it(spanning 10 years) and I truly believe that jump was musky, not white bass. They have begun a restocking program for the whites due to poor reproduction and I guess that is where these fish have come from the last two seasons. If you have never seen white bass or striped bass in the water moving around, it is a cool thing. Talk about nervous energy. They are active and fast. It is nice to see them on the lake, but geez, the ones in the cove look like nice snack sizes for musk, meals on wheels for sedentary cove fish. Note the upper reaches now have a 5-6 degree negative differential from the deepwater section of the reservoir. I am sure there are musky all over the reservoir, but when the temp differential gets going, I drop down into lower sections. I think with the falling temps the wandering fish tend to stick in the warmer water areas, and it seems to get pretty hard to see a fish in the cooler water. The reverse is very notable in late August/September, the upper reaches cool first and the fish are there biting early.

Clouds! Still no rain, but at least clouds. Water temps dropped off 6 degrees in a week and more than that in the headwater sections. Fish were biting. 50% on the hooking, lost contact with the bait a couple times and let it come up, ended up getting THREE surface hits on a pull bait. Not a good deal. Should have controlled the bait better. One of the missed fish was one of those bloated fish you occasionally see down here with what is evidently an unlimited appetite. Would hate to estimate the length of the fish, sure it was under 43, tremendous width though, and bulging out on the sides. Hmmm, wonder what I look like from the top? Saw more suckers today, must have been a good hatch somewhere, commonly see carp going along shorelines in the fall, but last two days it was suckers. Might be related to the shad die off a couple years boack?? Who knows. I would guess these meandering dopey fish get eaten in the fall, and I would make a guess that some fish are actually feeding on this pattern. It would seem there are more than enough shad to fill everybody up, but unless some fish are indeed feeding on these wandering suckers, hard to explain some of the "mud" positions you find muskies on down here. Took some pictures of some spots today for a project.

Another nice long cycle of work days with clouds, mist, rain etc., start my vacation and don't you know, sun again. Tomorrow supposed to be cloudy, I hope.

Odd set of luck this fall, no rain in the boat in 10 days fished since Sept. 2, fish numbers have held up but quality could use a couple rainy days. Last fall it seemed like water quality and weather were good every day I fished until Dec. flooding. This year I find myself passing on sunny days.

Mmmmhh, love the last half of October. Good color, good fishing and generally too good of weather. Bunched up my work days and my off days this fall, to leave myself several blocks of 5-8 days off with the reasoning I will get at least a couple low pressure system days in that time. Faulty reasoning at best. I just finished 8/9 days off and never had more than bright clouds down where I live. I looked at the map and hoped something was going to happen decent within the 100 miles out that I fish, it probably did, but it didn't involve either weather or KY politics.

Did finally get a day Thursday where it was predicted to be mostly cloudy, possible showers. It wasn't but the fishing was good. Water temps upper 60's in am up to 71-72 pm in the upstream areas, great color and clarity to the water except as you got toward the dam it became a little too clear. First thing spotted was suckers at the boat landing, 3 small schools and all the perfect lunch size, running in the 11-14 inch range. Also schools of LARGE gizzard shad using the same areas. Unusual to see suckers by the boat launch. The problem with where I fish is the overabundance of easy lunch. It isn't like the fish are particularly hungry.

Fish oddly enough were hungry and fished in upper 70 degree weather and sun with occassional light breeze and saw fish all day. Action was so good I didn't even regret leaving early for my wife's birthday celebration. End result was 13 fish up 7 hits, 5 boated.

Neighbor was invited but the honeydew list was evidently too long. It would have been a very good day to have a musky virgin in the boat.

Went to the trouble to post a bunch of lures to sell and discover the next night when I come home that the computer is down and wife has picked this day to hook up to the third provider in last three months. Actually it would be our 4th provider total.
This is very iriritating. Took all the plugs down, and then tried to contact three other people who I was swapping with.

Why swapping plugs at this time of year? Would rather not-but two words sum it up, MASSIVE
and HIGH. Off for 8 days last two weeks and best light condition has been bright haze, mostly pure sunlight during the day. In fact looking at the national weather map, I don't see the first cloud from Virginia to Missouri, and we sit about in the center of that.

Long time no writing. Started fall fishing with a trip to WI and fished basically 8 days. Good and bad. Good for total fish 12, poor for size running from 28-44". Usually expect some bigger fish during this trip and...if I would have been able to use my cell phone with any type of confidence, I mighta coulda woulda shoulda got one. Sworrall invited me to fish over by him and I was available when he invited me and I would have scooted right over, since I always was itchin to see some of that water. Unfortunately, I didn't figure out how to get a message off the phone until I was actually heading out to fish the last day. You guys saw the result when you saw MY fish in Slammr's hands on the home page for a month...

WI at the first of Sept. was pretty normal fishing for me except the big ones just did not seem to be up. Sunny weather, warm, some good wind, fish came in spurts, three three fish days in the week.
Also had my brother in law up fishing for 4 days with me and our best day was the first we fished together when we boated two and lost 2. My brother in law is a great guy to fish with and he is still new to the sport and does cool things that newbies do. He hooked his fish on a tallywhacker, then let it swim toward him on a slack line with that kind of "what happened?" look on his face. I was looking and saw his line swinging out to the side of the boat and told him to tighten up, the fish was still on. He did and proceeded to have the fish wind it around the back of the boat, hooked his line on a hanging bucktail in the middle of the boat, and then wrapped it around the electric motor in the front, before winding the leader up snug against the rod tip, for netting purposes!!!!!!! His past exploits include missing a 20 lb fish with the net and hoisting it up over the side of the boat by the hooks on my tallywhacker, which were stuck in the net and the fish, while I held my breath in awe!! He had some beginner tough times on this trip, actually having 3 big hits on surface baits that he missed, and having another, 40's maybe, fish come into the boat hot on the bait. Good trip all in all.

Two weeks ago tried to hook up with Manitou Dan at Cave. Got a later start than I planned and we had communication problems, never did get hooked up. Tough sunny warm day. I was able to get a couple fish to the boat and a couple more activities by jerking a minnow bait along shoreline weed edges, but have to admit that a couple hours of that stuff about does my shoulders in, particularly when it is upper 80's out and sunny with little breeze. Glad to catch a couple but found another area with the same characteristics and started down the weedline, and got to admit, I quit and went and got some ice cream on the drive home.

Have had to sit and watch perfect weather for a week while I worked every day of it including today. That is tough to do. Now I have a week off and they predict NW winds tomorrow, and then SUN, SUN. The water temp drop had to just have the KY muskies going wild last week.

I picked up some new baits in the mail this week and expect to catch some muskies on them this fall. Probably a hundred or so, but maybe, slightly less than that. I finally picked up a new bait for me that has me a little excited about fishing it. (Only picked up a few hundred of those over the years!)
Last fall had the best fishing since I lived in KY both for size and numbers, but it was due to an unusually stable water level and gently declining water temps. Both of those things can go to heck pretty quickly down here, and it gets to be a test of how fast you can identify positive factors and put them to use before the game changes.

If anybody wants to fish give me a holler on the board. I fish alot this time of year through NOV. and usually by myself and am happy to have some company.

Ahh, good old choices and fishing. Thursday was supposed to be the start of a warming trend, with clouds in the pm and some rain. Left early and already clouded when arriving, this was gonna be good. Picked up musky action quickly bringing up 3 active fish in my first 5 spots with two bites, and one run up, and actually hooking an undersized and bringing it to the boat before it shook off. Clouds looked great early, and then........sun, more sun and more sun. Sometime around 3 pm or so I started to sightsee a little. Earlier I had noted a number of largemouth bass, spawning male sized, heading to the backs of coves, EVERY FISH WAS HEADED TOWARD THE BACK. I figured to go look around some of the way back areas and see what could be seen. One of the first coves I went back into had water up in the brush a little and was going along the bank checking fish and see carp carp carp and then another fish that just didn't compute. Looked again and darn, muskie, hanging with his brothers the carp. Saw another fish in this same tiny cove, with more carp. Checked out some more coves and found another muskie lying with its brother the largemouth bass. Then had another muskie just swim by the boat, unusual in this lake. Tote for the day, 8 muskies seen, 4 on the bait, 4 along the shores. Biggest fish unfortunately, maybe 30". As I was leaving the lake noticed clouds building, 10 miles down the road to Lake Cumberland, heavy shower hit. I am sure all the musky, and the big ones fed for an hour or more. Oh well, I thought, it will be good striper fishing tonight. I landed my boat to striper fish under a cloudless sky. Many stars, NO stripers.

My excuses are many. They dumped about 17 inches off the lake yesterday. Water clarity was clear in most of the midlake, good(murky) in the upper reaches, but...sun was too bright, air was too dry. Spring is poor this year, as most years. Early warmth had water temps to 74-76 in mid april. Since then we have had snow and frosts and coolish weather, and some rain. Most of the water currently is low 60. Saw what I believed to be spawning shad yesterday on Green, right up on shore.

Cool weather will sustain the shallow musky bite for a while down here, but we got clobbered with rain, raising water levels on every KY musky lake at least 5 feet or more out of summer pool. These lakes can be very dynamic when water level, flows, drawdowns and temperature changes are going on at the same time. Currently they are pulling a lot of water from all the lakes, and the early draw usually makes for tough fishing, particularly if it is a heavy draw. If it is a slow draw the fish seem to adjust and move back and forth in their areas. Heavy draws tend to take them out of flat water and out of the back of the flatter coves. Rise in the water level seems to have various effects, but the big negative is that it enlarges the fishing area tremendously, and also puts a cover line all the way around the lake, essentially the same as a 50 mile weedline on Green River. Water temps right now are good and fish are active and can be got if I can find them.
The problem with the high water is that it also brings a lot of mud into the live coves(with feeder streams) and the main feeds for the lake. You then get the situation where the smaller creeks coming into the live coves clear out the water in the BACK of the cove, leaving it muddy out front. Interesting dynamic if the water is warmer in the back. One of the discouraging things that occurs is that when the draw is heavy you catch a fish in a spot one day and the next, it is dry land again. Tough game, LOL! I usually fish 1-2 days a week in the spring and it is generally a challenging casting bite. I love a little environmental stability, and almost never ever get it in the spring, dam keeper and mother nature don't like me I guess.
This will also put so much crap into Lake Cumberland it will be like winning the lottery to get to the striper areas without knocking the cups out on my prop. Sunny tomorrow, do the lawn, maybe stripers in the PM. Rain on Thursday, man, no telling how great the bite will be!

Oh boy, time off and good weather look like they will coincide again this week and I will make another attempt to do the striper/muskie double.
Noted as often of Green River, big color changes and temp changes as you move across the 20 miles or so of lake I fish. Get up near Robinson creek and everything upstream from Emerald Isle was green last week. Nice bloom. Good for fish. Saw them there. Go back the other direction toward Green River and the added flow of cold river water had that side pretty clear well down the lake. Fish present on both sides. Usually look for water clarity I like which is borderline murky, at least that is my choice in warm weather. I would never fish this water by choice on a trip to WI, but it works great down here, particularly for shallow fish.

On another note, I count 12 56", 4 58" fish, 6 60" fish, and 2 62" fish on the thread that says what is the biggest musky you have ever seen? Hmmm, I never saw any of those.

I don't have the slightest idea what one does to create a blog here, but it seems like I can talk to myself pretty effectively. Have been fishing this week and last week and have picked up a new obsession, throwing for stripers after dark on Lake Cumberland. Caught a 30 inch fish the first night I ever tried it and have contacted fish ever since but no big nights, mainly a result of the weather since I started. Cold fronts and storms. Have musky fished twice this week and in an effort to do a legal musky/legal striper on the same day, have caught the front end twice now and the fish that is usually the tougher, popping legals on Tues. and Thursday. Both days deteriorated into windblown rain and cold, and ended both days chilled but ready to go get the striper. Got to the next landing on Tuesday, and it was really blowing right into the landing with about a 4 mile run of lake to build the waves. I AM pitiful, and left the boat on the trailer. Last nite, got my fish but left lake kind of late and tried a new landing on Lake Cumberland, fished a little but windy again and no fish. I did have the good sense to pick the boat up before the rain started again though. 74 degree surface temp last week, 63 is my highest I have found, this week. I have a severe kink in my back and shoulders today from hunching up and shivering yesterday. I could have fished again, but, wanted to rest up a day before working again. I am looking for the dark of the moon to finally help me get this double before Doug Johnson gets it next spring.

All in all a good spring thus far, but had not had much fishing time until the last 2 weeks. Fish must still be up on the flats at Green, but starting to see fish in the coves some, so have not had to go up to the trolling ground to get fish. Temperature change and lake draw moved fish in mass quantities since last week.