Thread: Any advice for heading to D'Arbonne Saturday?

Well, Fish On Line said in another post that the boat channel going from the state park ramp out to the main channel may be very shallow and so even if you can launch at the state park you may not be able to go anywhere. If you don't want to drive all of the way into town, I would suggest you launch at either one of the Hwy 2 launches and go under the Hwy 2 bridge. I have caught good crappie before under the bridge during a drawdown (they love concrete) and along the edge of the channel after going under the bridge. If you decide to drive around to Jakes, fish can be caught anywhere along the channel on either side of the bridge. Just look for the shad, or the boats. LOL. Oh, and by the way, good luck. Hope to see you again in November.

I've heard perch bite has been good last couple days in the channel 10 to 12" deep

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Just got off the phone with my father who was fishing there this morning. He ended his day with eleven but said he didnt get a bite till about 9:30 and then the bite was pretty good. He was fishing in the channel about 15 ft down. He said the channel drys up somewhere but he's not good enough with directions to tell me where he was at when that happened. Good luck to yall.

Ok, this is the navionics view of the lake. Red and green are your boat lane markers. Someplaces it deviates from the actual channel, hope this clears things up some.

This is were hwy 2 crosses the lake


Where the channel comes together is called forks ferry. Between this point heading toward hwy 2 be careful


Another area out from terrel island to be careful of on lower end of lake


This is the spillway area


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At Forks ferry, that is where D'Arbonne and Corney Merge - up Corney wards 2 launch several hundred yards the Boat lane runs asross a sand bar which will be high and dry when the water is down where they stop draining --- during the last drawdown we could not find our way around it.

the same thing happens up corney on the Flats channel areas are narrow up that way as well ... That sand bar is close to the Red pointer in the second Chart screen

The actual channel of either Corney Creek or D'Arbonne Creek does not ever go dry in the lake area. You would have to go at least 15 miles above the area of the actual lake to get to a place in either Creek where it would dry up in holes that don't allow you to navigate any farther up the Creek. The average depth of both creek channels within the lake proper is probably an average of 20 feet deep, so a 5 foot drawdown doesn't affect boating in the actual channels other than being sure you don't go outside the original channel boundaries.......

Guys, thanks for all the input...I didn't get to read it all before I was away from the computer, but I got to see it in person....pretty low. The ramp in the park is now closed. The gate worker said it shut down last Monday and when I saw it, I could understand why. Also...and this is bad news that I hope doesn't last....the fish cleaning station is out of order. There was a note on the door and even a board nailed across the door so it wouldn't open.

I launched at Jakes yesterday morning... there was a little breeze, which turned into an all day wind, but I'd driven that far (for a camping trip with the kids and their troops), so I wasn't going to give up... managed to launch the boat, but one guy launching before me found a shallow spot and had to work with the motor to get out to the channel. My depth finder showed 1.9 ft when I was pulling right up to the side of the launch, so I'm a little worried about the accessibility of that ramp if they continue to draw it down. When we went into the park, they handed us a newspaper and the headline was about the drawdown. It's supposed to go to Nov 15, but they are considering letting it go longer so the shorelines where the salvinia is located can dry out completely, and possibly even get a frost to help kill it.

As far as fishing...there were a lot of fish in the channel, but convincing them to find my hook was a little hard. I did end up keeping 10 small ones to scrape since that's all I could catch. Well, except for a couple of gou that really got my blood pumping...until they surfaced. Fish wouldn't bite deep. As someone mentioned, 15 ft was about the magic number. Caught most by the bridge posts at Hwy 33 in 25-30 ft of water at 15 ft. Shiners and grey ghost jig caught all of them. Gou seem to like the GG. Really wish the wind had backed off, but it was still a pretty day on the lake.

Thanks again for all the feedback!