Thread: Rising water on KY/Barkley Lake

Originally Posted by jangle

Hey guys, whats some solid go to strategies for catching fish with the water and lake temp up like they are now? Fish shallow newly flooded brush or fish existing brush in now deeper water? Spider rig? I appreciate any tips or tricks for fishing this situation. Happy fishing and be safe out there!

I've only had one experience with those lakes in a flooded condition, and it was many decades ago ... and in April. Many people were simply turning around in the parking lots and heading home (or somewhere else). We were there on vacation & weren't about to leave !!
We happened upon some guys leaving and carrying a stringer of Slab Crappie .... and asked them how they were fishing. They told us they were going up into the flooded live trees and fishing minnows under a float ... putting the minnow down next to the tree (less than 1ft from the trunk) and covering all four "sides" of the tree.
At first we thought they were just kidding us young fellows, so we tried our usual methods of dipping the buck bushes & drifting flats. All we managed were a Catfish (flats) and one Crappie (Buck Brush). So we decided to give their method a shot. And we did catch Crappie doing it their way. The larger trees were more apt to have a fish on them, and any large dead tree seemed to hold more than one fish on them. And true to their advice ... you didn't get bit if you didn't put the minnow down right next to the trunk of the tree. I figured the fish were holding with their face to the tree, to keep oriented in the dirty water conditions, but don't know if that's correct or not. I don't remember exactly whether the lake was still rising at the time or if it was slowly receding. All I know is there was 3-4ft of water around the trees that would normally be along the shoreline, and 2-3ft deep up in the stand of trees that we could reach. We had our minnows about 18 inches below our floats.

thanks alot! I may put this tactic to use this weekend!

Be really careful if you are planning on moving around much at all. We put some beds out this morning and the amount of trees and debris in the water is tremendous.

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We put some beds out today Austin as well, yes lots of debris floating, saw several bass boats take off wide open headed toward the main lake. Not me with what I saw!

Originally Posted by jdrowl67

saw several bass boats take off wide open!

I think that's the only way they run !for them