Good news lake will be raised to 700' to 705' this spring. They are running ahead of schedule.
Printable View
Good news lake will be raised to 700' to 705' this spring. They are running ahead of schedule.
and tell me how that is great news?????????? there will be so many trees in the water that you will not be able to fish........ it will be 4 years or more before fishing is even close to being as good as it is right now. i hope when they let it up it leaks and they have to bring it back down and leave it from now on. a striper is a salt water fish anyway
Great News, I am ready !!!!!!!!!
:scratchhead what does a Striper have to do with anything ??
While there may be some trees that get floated by the raise in water levels, it won't be any worse than it used to be back when it would rise after a heavy rain event. And for that matter ... NOW is the time to go and tie down some of those trees !! Get them anchored BEFORE they get floated off to the dam.
Check these stats, and you'll see that the water level raise won't be much more than current level ... not to mention that it went to 725 in May 2011. Lake Cumberland Water Level
... cp :kewl
crappiepappy did you fish in 2011 when the water was 725? well i had a tourney then and it was hard to fish. be fishing in 20 to 30 fow of water. and next thing you know every pole in the boat is hung. and about the striper that is the only thing i have heard people say the water being low is killing the striper. and you make it pretty clear that you dont fish cumberland because before you tie those trees down you will have to cut them. and if you look at the water level now it is up about 15 foot from 2 weeks ago. the next time you go fishing for the weekend look and see if the water is 700 and go to cumberland and you will see what i mean.
AND WHAT DOES FLOATING TREES HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING I SAID
All Part of fishing. As they say if you aint getting hung up your not fishing where the fish are at.
Hey CP, I believe you and slabeye are talking about two diff things. What he is talking about is all the new growth that has sprung up over the last few years. Around alot of the banks, in most bays, there has been quite a few trees that has grown pretty good since the water has been low. I also fished
the tourney he was talking about in 2011. When we started out that morning there were so many logs floating you couldn't even get your boat to go fast enough to plane out. But going around all of them was the easy part. When we started fishing, after it took almost an hour to get there, we were getting hung up everytime you turned around. And we didn't have any type of brushpile marked. But the df screen would all of sudden be covered. Once the sun got up good is when we noticed we were fishing in the tree tops. We were pulling green leaves up out of the water. Nobody did very good that day :Rofl.
Right now with the way they have had the water levels low has been great for crappie fishing. Not good for the stripers thou. But you raise it 25-30 ft, its going to make it tough for awhile. Most spots that i have marked there is 15-25fow. When they raise it they will be in 35-50fow. Will have to find new ones.
thanks chucky, i might not have been very clear in what i was trying to say.
and you are right chucky i have somewhere around 100 to 150 spot from one end of the lake to the other. and if the water comes up 20 foot about 80% of my spots will be 40 to 55 foot deep. and all my walleye spots too.
guess i will have to start fishing green more again and hitting dale hollow some.
But won't more trees/brush help in the long run. You will lose your current spots but shouldn't the new growth provide even more in the future. Just asking, I do not fish Cumberland. Wrong side of the state for me. I'm stuck up on the Ohio river. :fish
One thing's for sure boys ... The good old Army is going to raise the water level at Cumberland, and that's pretty much that. Might as well make the best of it. Like CP says: Now is the time to go tie down some of those trees. Might get some new brush out too.:)
I think it will improve the fishing in the long run.
In the long run it will help fishing with better survival of spawns. More cover for fish. And any lake you fish has logs in the spring when the water comes up. More shoreline equals more places to fish.
The army will raise it dispite what anybody says, that is for sure. And the new growth will definately add more structure/cover to the lake. I'd say it will be the most cover that lake has had since it was made :biggrin. In time, the fishing should be better as well. Slabeye gets tongue tied sometimes:Rofl. All he was saying is since the waters been down for so long it has taken the crappie fishing this long to be very good because they have to adapt. Get into a seasonal pattern and the long hours a fisherman spent locating and learning the lake. When it does come up, well its almost going to be a new lake. You'll have to start all over again as well as the crappie having to adapt again. He just wishes is stays like it is. I TOLD YOU SLABEYE, you can't just fish Cumberlandrotfl. Like he said, it may be 2-4 years before the fishing is as it is now. Its always been good for slabs but its just better now.
ps. Kycreekboy.......you are always welcome to come down and fish with some of us yahoos:).
I might just take you up on that some day. Looking for something different in the future.
This is what our local paper reported. This sounds good anyway.
This year, they will stock 150,000 more walleyes and 150,000 more striped bass than normal, the state said. Altogether, they will add 1 million walleye and striped bass to the lake this year, giving a boost to fishing.
Read more: The Paducah Sun - Corps plans to raise Lake Cumberland
I haven't fished C-land for many a year, now ... that's true.
I wasn't sure if the "trees" being talked about were live ones, or all the dead ones lying on the bank. I looked at Google Earth, last update in 2011, and everywhere I looked at the banks ... it was ALL rock, and not much in the way of any "live trees", but some scattered bushes here & there. All the trees I saw were dead ones that had been left high & dry, just below the old (live) tree line.
Was y'alls tourney on May 5th ... that's when the lake hit 725. That was just bad luck on the timing of the tourney IMHO.
I was just curious as to how big a tree could grow in only a few years, on a rock bank .... that's why I questioned the "live" tree comments. I was actually thinking it was the dead trees that everyone was worried about, which is why I mentioned tying them down NOW ... before the level raise floats them off to the dam. If you're sneaky enough, your logjams/brushpiles won't even be discovered by the casual angler. I'd also mark those live bushes, for this Spring ... the fish only know a specific BANK that they spawn on !! If the brush they were used to isn't there (in the proper depth/temp), they'll just keep going until they find a suitable spot. My suggestion was to simply MAKE a spot, using the dead wood that litters most banks now ... not cut down anything (which I don't think is even legal to do).
I don't Striper fish, and don't care to .... but, that IS one of the major $$ draws to the lake. More water & more stocking will bring back more business & more marinas.
I use weedless jigs around wood ... so I ain't skeered !! It might be a problem for spider riggers, but I'm not into that method all that much, yet.
I think anglers will have to do more "adapting" than the fish will. And it may even be a good thing, if the trees that have grown up over the last few years are flooded. They'll die, and then you'll have standing timber to fish around !! At the very least, it will give the newbies somewhere to concentrate on ... and leave the submerged stuff for those more seasoned anglers, or those willing to make their own "piles".
... cp :kewl
Crappiepappy the upper end of the lake has some trees close to 30 ft. tall. Went down this morning and took a look and it is up into the trees at 695 ft. on the upper end.
It was May 7, 2011, on a Saturday. Probably shouldn't have called them trees. Most thinks trees are 20-30 ft tall. They are saplings, anywhere from 3" round up to 6" and stand anywhere from 3 ft to 16 ft. Alot of logs that float down the lake, if they make it past Beaver creek, the corps has been removing them from the water. They don't want a log jam coming down to the dam since it not finished. If any one is going to make "spots" with them, they better get them before they float to far down.
Sounds like now is the time to be marking spots. Take a digital camera with you too so you can have a picture of what it looks like.
That is what we do on Barren when it gets drawn down and we build and mark piles.
Now it sounds like everything is on (my) schedule. When they 1st drew the lake down for the dam repair and laid out the time line for the work to be completed, I though wow they will be plenty of new growth by the time they finish and the fishing should explode with all the new cover. My initial thoughts were it might take a couple of years after filling for the lake to settle down and the effects of the fish explosion to have an effect.
Since my buddy and me plan on retiring in 2 or 3 years it looks like everything will be just about right.
I can't wait for Cumberland to get back to normal. Lots of ledges & pockets that we fished before are high & dry. I just don't see where the cover that's grown can possibly hurt anything. We as fishermen will have to adjust. Something most of us do on a daily basis anyway. I realize we'll have to relearn it, but anyone that fished it for years before the drawdown will not have trouble finding good spots. As far as Striper go I wish it would get half as good as it used to be when it was a keeper everytime you caught a fish & they weren't hard to find that were more than willing to slam a bait at night. Really made for some long old nights for me, but absolutley some of the most fun nights too. Can't wait. Fish all night & sleep all day the next. Oh Yeah !!!