This is what I know about the lake from doing my research on the web and from talking to Scott on our trip down. Most anglers that do well this time of year fish the ledges in the main lake using deep diving crank baits, jigs and worms. Barkley Lake has more fish, but Kentucky on average has bigger fish and 99% of the tournaments are won out of Kentucky.
We have a pattern going in the cuts, something that is not typical for that time of year, but we also have a problem with our pattern? it?s not going to last long! The fish we?re catching with the exception of the first one Scott lost were all between the 13 to 16 inch range. These are the males that are heading out to the main lake after leaving their precious fry. We had to hit a number of cuts to catch a limit that would not win a tournament nor come close to cutting a check, at least on the pro side of things.
The big females have long since vacated the cuts and are out in the main lake already, resting and feeding up. We decided to wait until Sunday (third day of practice) to start fishing the main body of water hoping that the dam operators will be pulling water creating the current needed to produce a good bite.
Scott studied the map the night before to find a location that he thought would be a good place to start. It?s an area with a lot of ?finger type? ledges or bars that are right adjacent and running parallel to the main shipping channel.
The water temp is still 80 degrees, the wind was five to seven, and the conditions were 92 and sunny? freaking HOT!!
After zig zagging over the structure using his sonar and GPS with Navionics chip installed, Scott keyed in on some good sharp drops going down to 35 feet with the top of the bars coming up to 20 feet. I was alternating between a black and blue jig and a Carolina rig and worm. Scott was throwing that worm again. Marking a few good fish periodically, Scott finally caught a fish immediately when a barge was passing by, the barge creating a current of its own activated a fish to come over and eat. Nothing big, but a 17 inch keeper, so that at least told us that the fish we were seeing were quite possibly bass. Now we just had to figure out how to catch them.
We fished around for a couple hours with out a bite. At one time we hit a spot where the screen was just chuck full of good fish, they weren?t balls of shad either, suspended off the bottom in 15 to 18 FOW. We tried drop shotting them, we tried cranking, we tried everything. Nothing doing.
The conclusion at the time was? the fish are here, but without the current, they?re not going to eat, and we weren?t going to wait for barges all day.
So we finished out the day fishing some more cuts and verifying the water was correct for the current pattern we had found.
Here's pic of the 3.5 lber
Next will be tournament day 1
