Big shout out and thank you to crappie.com member Indianachinker for coercing me into going to Patoka as he lives close by. Patoka has always been my favorite lake to fish but the past number of years, crappie went small on us, and lost all the weeds in the lake so I hadn’t fished it for crappie for past 3-4 years except a few times for walleyes. Lake is flooded and up 11.4 ft as the only 2 bridges you can get under now is Painter Creek and Hwy 164 at Lick Fork and if you do try and launch, most launches you have to beach your boat on the concrete ramps if by yourself. I was on the water at 6:45 am and fish finders were showing fish around 10’ deep to as much as 20’ deep making it hard to catch. Add 11.4 ft of water and very little of this lake is shallow anywhere except in the flooded trees. Only caught 18 including a couple small bass but did catch 1-14”, 1-12”, couple of 10’s, and 2 -9s with the rest dink’s. All fish released as had as much as 125’ of line out trolling PICO crankbaits with the hot color being Smokie Shad. That is also a favorite for bass. Speed 1.6 to 1.8 mph and sometimes was running right thru submerged timber. Water was really very light stained blue green almost clear in spots and boat would spook schools of bait fish. Water temp was 86.3 under a hot sun blue sky with little to no north breeze at times. With the lake flooded and now at least 10,000 plus acres and so much standing timber still in spots you need to be super careful running big motor if you don’t know your way around the lake. Maybe Patoka is on a comeback. Time will tell. I was off the water by noon and only saw 3 other boats on entire lake fishing. Needle nose plyers in the pics are 8 inches long and couple of pics are fish on a 15” golden rule.
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