Thread: 5/5 Barkley Gills

Nice mess. That should keep you busy for a while cleaning.

Yeah, nice catch. I enjoy catching them too but i'll be darned if I want to clean that many again at one time. Last cooler full like that took 3 hours to finish. Way too old for that now. Ate good for a long time tho.

It isn't that bad about an hour. I'll do it several more times this year.

Nice mess! I just got back from a 7 day trip to my fish camp down at Barkley and had mixed results. I got down there last Thursday and did decent on the redear the first two days but then the redear bite dried up. We found some redear beds and actually sight fished them but they weren't holding many fish. I wasn't sure if they were just getting started to build them or what.

My time frame for redear is from about middle April or so, to probably June 1st. That sucks because it's a small window of opportunity. I personally catch them up here in Southern Indiana in the autumn and would love to figure them out at the Twin Lakes in the autumn. I've got a new idea I will try in late September and throughout October, it involves the river channel.

Just got back from Barkley. Gills were on fire, caught several real nice crappie and a few good redear. My fishing buddy caught his personal best at 13 1/2 inches.
Fished with small jigs tipped with beemoths, power wigglers, gulp alive or crappie nibbles. At one point I caught 7 channels on 7 casts, those cats love little jigs.(1/64)