Bluegrass State 2009 Crappie Forecast
April 27, 2009 by admin · Comments Off
This spring should offer up a great opportunity to go out and catch a boatload of slabs. Across Kentucky, fisheries are in great shape. With some help from Mother Nature, your success will be only a cast or two away.
Here are a few of the places you might want to target this year.
Check out Paul Moore’s summary of crappie the state’s predicted crappie hot spots by following the link to Kentucky Game and Fish below.
Bluegrass State 2009 Crappie Forecast.
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Kentucky tags panfish at Elmer Davis Lake
April 27, 2009 by admin · Comments Off
Anglers fishing at Elmer Davis Lake in Owen County can help the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources by returning tags from marked bluegill and redear sunfish (shellcrackers).
Kentucky Fish and Wildlife employees recently inserted tags into more than 250 bluegill and 450 redear sunfish. More fish will be tagged in the coming weeks. Anglers who return tags from these fish are eligible for an award.
Researchers are trying to determine the angler catch of bluegill and redear sunfish. This information will be used in the future to improve panfish fishing in small lakes across the state.
Each tag consists of a piece of white tubing inserted into the back of the fish. Tags contain the department’s name, telephone number and a fish identification number. Each tagged fish will be 6 inches or longer.
Anglers who catch tagged fish should return the tag to Kentucky Fish and Wildlife. For convenience, tags and fish information may be turned in at the lake using the envelopes located at a drop box at the ramp at the lake’s dam.
Anglers practicing catch-and-release may clip the tag from the fish before releasing it. Only one envelope should be used for each tag.
Last year, researchers ran a similar tagging study at Beaver Lake in Anderson County.
Cedar Creek Lake gets weed-eating carp
April 27, 2009 by admin · Comments Off
State fishery workers have stocked Cedar Creek Lake with more than 800 grass carp in an effort to control weed growth in the 784-acre Lincoln County watershed.
“We are not trying to eliminate the vegetation in Cedar Creek Lake. We are trying to reduce it so it doesn’t get to nuisance levels,” said John Williams, the southeastern district fisheries biologist for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The fish are sterile and cannot reproduce.
For the rest of Gary Garth’s story in The Courier-Journal, follow the link below:
Cedar Creek Lake gets weed-eating carp | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal.
His first big musky
April 27, 2009 by admin · Comments Off
Growing up fishing in farm ponds for largemouth bass and bluegill was training for what happened on April 9, 2009.
While fishing at Cave Run Lake with my father-in-law, who happens to be a great guide, I had my first run in with the fish of 10,000 casts. As I bumped a 1/4-ounce spinner across a log — boom — suddenly, a lanky creature appeared. Two seconds later I was fighting my first Muskellunge, albeit a small one.
When taking kids fishing, it’s not about you
April 27, 2009 by admin · Comments Off
I love to fish so much that I’ve nearly trashed our van on Interstate 75 because I was gazing at South Elkhorn Creek instead of watching the road. I store fishing gear in my car, I’ve raised night crawlers in my kitchen, and I’ve stayed up for 24 hours straight because fish were biting.
I tell you this only because I want you to know that I’m serious when I offer one important piece of advice about taking kids fishing:
Leave your own rod at home.
If you don’t, it will be impossible to follow the second rule of fishing with a kid:
You only have 10 minutes.
Shakey head worms: power fishing with a finesse presentation
April 27, 2009 by admin · Comments Off
The first time I watched Chad Miles fish, he caught a 23-inch largemouth bass within the first 10 minutes. Tossing a straight-tailed, 6-inch plastic worm beside a submerged flat rock, he took his hand off the handle of his spinning reel as his lure fluttered to the bottom of Nolin River Lake.
He gently shook the rod tip a few times, and then slowly lowered the tip. The rod cracked upward and bowed as he stuck that big hog. He told me the Shakey style was dynamite on Nolin River Lake. He wasn’t lying.
The Shakey style of fishing is the latest of the rages that burn through the bass fishing world every couple of years. Bass anglers well remember the Sluggo, drop shotting, the rise of creature baits, Carolina rigs, stroking a jig and the float and fly.
The reason these techniques move from a local quirk to nationwide rage is they catch a lot of bass. Many of these new lures or new fishing presentations are just variations on the tried and true. Shakey-style fishing is an improvement on an older technique.
Police news: Fishermen’s boat, vehicle sink in Cedar Lake
April 20, 2009 by admin · Comments Off
STANFORD — About 8 p.m. Saturday, Lincoln County Deputy Sheriffs Ryan Kirkpatrick and Robin Jones went to Cedar Lake Boat Dock on U.S. 150 to respond to a call that two fishermen had accidentally sunk their boat and vehicle, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department said.
Read more:
amnews.com – The Advocate-Messenger in Danville, KY.
A finesse worm that works as well in Kentucky today as it did 30 years ago
April 19, 2009 by admin · Comments Off
My dad came home from a boat show in Louisville back in the late 1970s with a small plastic tackle box, a 5-foot top-of-the-line light power graphite rod and a new Shakespeare spinning reel spooled with 6-pound line. Excitement radiated from him as he couldn’t wait to try his new gear in the distillery lakes close to our home near Bardstown, Kentucky – an area that produces a generous share of the world’s bourbon.
Similar in size to those used for cigars, the small tackle box came with five compartments: one filled with funny-looking leadheads and the other four filled with small, 4-inch straight-tailed worms. Black worms filled one compartment; grape worms lay in another, while brown with an orange tail and motor oil filled the other two.
He bought the new gear from a man at the boat show who told him all about this new system that caught bass in the toughest conditions. The man said this new technique would excel in the weedy, shallow and clear distillery lakes near our home if he just stuck to it long enough to learn it.
The author, Kentucky Afield Magazine's associate editor, with a big largemouth caught in a pond on a Slider worm.
The legendary Charlie Brewer Slider worm
My dad caught many bass with his new gear, but soon he could not find the small tackle box and rod because I had them on the shore of one of those distillery lakes. I learned to consistently catch bass year-round using light line and 4-inch worms and profited from it enormously. The knowledge gained provided the foundation for my later writings about bass fishing.
The man at the boat show was Charlie Brewer and he died 9 years ago this week. In the mythology of bass fishing, finesse techniques of using light line, subtle lures and spinning tackle to tempt spooky clear-water bass belongs to the deep, crystalline lakes of California. In reality, these techniques belong to Charlie Brewer.
He developed the Slider system to fool black bass in what he called the “tough, mean” reservoirs of east Tennessee, southeast Kentucky and the Highland Rim of middle Tennessee. Brewer’s Slider Worm launched the finesse revolution 20 years before most heard the term.
Brewer returned from World War II to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee and opened a radio and TV repair shop with knowledge gained in the South Pacific. A natural-born tinkerer, Brewer grew weary of the long, fishless hours throwing a baitcaster spooled with black nylon line and a crankbait such as the Heddon River Runt. He figured there had to be a better way to catch bass more consistently when they aren’t active and chasing lures.
Brewer developed a unique leadhead designed to plane in the water, not fall to the bottom like a smooth rock. He also poured his own slender 4-inch ringed worms with an egg sack that tapered to a paddle tail. He cast these worms on short graphite or graphite composite rods with a Tennessee handle for increased sensitivity. He removed the bail from the reels to increase casting distance for his 1/16- to 1/4-ounce leadheads and diminutive worms. He founded the Crazy Head Lure Company in 1970, now known as the Charlie Brewer Slider Company.
The key to Brewer’s system is presentation. The Slider method is designed to find bass suspended in the water column or hanging just above the bottom. Bass in clear-water lakes such as Lake Cumberland, Laurel River Lake and Dale Hollow Lake suspend most of the time during the day, especially in summer and winter. Suspended bass represent one of the toughest bass fishing situations.
The original Crazy Head was a flat-bottomed leadhead that came through the water in a straight line on the retrieve. Brewer later developed other styles of flat-sided heads and bullet shaped ones, but the basic concept remains. The heart of his Slider system is manipulating the speed of the retrieve and the weight of the leadhead until you hit the combination of depth and speed bass want that particular day.
This may require cutting some weight off the Slider head till it weighs just 1/32-ounce or flattening it to slow the rate of fall. Find a likely fish-holding structure, such as a channel point laden with boulders or stumps. Cast parallel to the structure and count to ten. Reel the Slider worm with a rhythmic, but slow cadence and watch your line intently. Keep counting down and reeling slowly until you get a rapid peck or nip from a bluegill, baby bass or crappie. This is the activity zone. Count down a little more on the next cast and you’ll be in bass.
Once you find the depth and speed they want, you can fish similar areas all over the lake and catch fish all day. The Slider worm resembles a minnow more than anything and fish can’t help themselves. It is simple and ingenious. Plus, light to medium-light spinning rods and 6-pound line make 2-pounders feel like trophies. It is simply a fun and relaxing way to catch bass after bass, plus the occasional trophy bluegill, crappie, walleye and even freshwater drum.
Brewer also believed bass anglers do way too much running and gunning instead of fishing. He felt folks should pattern their fish close-by and focus more on technique than covering water. Brewer relates in his touchstone book “Charlie Brewer on Slider Fishing” that some of his best fishing days stemmed from engine trouble that forced him to scour the fishy-looking areas near the ramp. This also saves gas and wear and tear on the big motor.
All you need is a small box or a paper bag with a few colors of Slider worms, some Slider heads, a pair of sidecutter and needlenose pliers and knowledge. Largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass gobble them up with the same abandon now as they did when Sliders first hit the market 30 years ago.
By Lee McClellan, an award-winning outdoors writer and associate editor of Kentucky Afield magazine.
