Quote Originally Posted by riverhorse View Post
Craig Clinton Lake had appox 55 surface temp the water was v dingy in the area of the lake I was at. When the water gets to around a certain temp is it safe to say the lake is close to turning over or is that not much of a problem on corp lakes like we have around here? Can you give me some info on lake turnover on these local lakes and how the fish tend to react to it?

Thanks
riverhorse,

Kansas reservoirs may weakly stratify but lake wide, complete stratification is not very common on most lakes. Lakes such as Wilson and Milford can see areas of prolonged stratification while other lakes such as El Dorado and Cheney hardly stratify at all. Stratification of Kansas lakes is usually broken by wind stirring up the lake and mixing layers or an inflow event instead of water temperature change associated with changing of the seasons so we don't normally see a hard fall turnover on a regular, predictable basis. I think it would be safe to say that anything that may have become stratified during the summer would have turned over already with all the high winds we've seen over the past couple of weeks even though surface water temperature is well above the magic 39.2F/4C temp.

In a heavily stratified lake, fishes will tend to avoid the bottom layer that is lacking adequate oxygen. Temperature sensitive species, such as striped bass, will seek out the area just above the thermocline where they have adequate oxygen and the cooler temperatures that they prefer. Most popular sportfish in Kansas (crappie, walleye, white bass, wipers, catfish) aren't as warm water sensitive as the stripers and don't need to seek out the cooler, well oxgenated water near the thermocline and won't concentrate as heavily as the more sensitive species. However, in a heavily stratified lake all species will spend most of their time above the thermocline where oxygen levels are acceptable making fishing below the thermocline unproductive.

How the fish react to the turnover depends on the strength of the stratification. Sometimes fish may hardly be impacted if only a small area was weakly stratified. Larger areas with heavier stratification may cause fish to move to more comfortable waters when the layers mix. Oxygen levels may decrease and clarity may decrease upon turnover which may cause the fish to move to other areas with more favorable conditions. Slight changes may impact prey species causing them to move which in turn causes the sportfish to follow.