KY Lake Sunday/ New water under the boat

[M R Dux]

Got to looking at the weather forecast for the first few days of the coming week and decided to get out there and just be another one of the many lake lice that infected KY Lake over the holiday. After the trip to Blood River Thursday and losing about $100 worth of crankbaits (collectively), I thought I would try out some different water than I had ever fished. I keep a set of lake maps here at the studio and study them while eating lunch or taking a break. I had selected several likely looking spots to try.

I got on the water just before 7 and headed out to the first of the new spots, a flat that had 18-25 feet of water between the secondary and main river channels. I keep reading about the Mississippi guys fishing the flats down there so I had to check some out. If I had wanted to keep yellow bass, I could have sunk my boat. Those little suckers were everywhere and would hit a crank that was bigger than they are. I caught pretty much everything but big crappie. A couple of 12 inchers fell for the cranks.

I went a few miles down the lake to check some other spots but by mid day the wind had turned from the west and the lake was getting covered with boaters who had zero sense of anything that resembled courtesy. I had one ski boat come by me no more than 25 feet away running at least 50 mph. Poor guy, I guess I was crowding him while trolling at 1.7mph because there was only a half mile of water on either side of me. Good thing he came from behind. Had he been coming at my bow, he would have gotten a single-finger salute.

I ended up charting miles of fresh trolling areas and finished with 11 keeper crappie and a 4 pound green carp that will go great on the grill. The biggest crappie was probably 1 1/4 pound. Most were just solid keepers.

I was proud to have only lost one crank, a brand new, just out of the box, crappie pattern Wiggle Wart that some mysterious species hit behind a planer board and tried to leave with board and all but just got the crank. I think my % of lost cranks is a direct result of having quackrstackr in the boat.

Thunderstorms and wind for the next few days will keep me in the shop. The crankbait bite is just starting to get going. I saw lots of baitballs but very few of them had anything but yellows under them. It won't be long.

Got 30 new C55 blank cranks in the mail today. Have airbrush ,will restock the tacklebox.

[Grizzly2k1]

Man I'd like to try pulling cranks a time or two.

[M R Dux]

Man I'd like to try pulling cranks a time or two.

Let me know when you are coming down and we'll make it happen.

[slabseeker1]

So your using the planer boards that you'd sent me pictures of to pull those crankbaits? Still the same amount of line out? By the way, my newest granson arrived yesterday while sitting holding him I wasn't sure where to begin. Had so much I wanted to tell him about, so we just sat looking at each other.

[M R Dux]

I had the big Opti boards out Sunday for a while but it was still too rough to use them. I had 60 feet of line out behind the board and 60 feet from the rod to the board. Lots of folks can't get their brain around the fact that you have to treat that rig like the board is not there. Whatever amount of line you would normally use to get X bait down X number of feet deep has to be used whether the board is there or not. Then you have to decide how far you want the board away from the boat.

Congrats on the new Grandson.