The lake level is at 598.29. Normal summer pool is 599.77. So about a foot and a half low. Water temps are all over the place. 73 in the morning 79 in the afternoon due to our up and down weather. Some night been getting down to 49 degrees. Water color very clear everywhere except extreme north end that has a lot of carp and boat traffic stirring it up. Are we in fall transition I say not yet I am still catching my fish same spots last month or so and same methods of doing so. Here is what I am doing!!!!

“WHITE BASS”
I am fishing very shallow flats that I see baitfish on the surface up on the north end until about 9:30 then we go deep. I am using my 5/8oz. jigging spoon with a hair jig above it on both applications. Up shallow cast and pop it back to the boat just getting the spoon off bottom. Most times they hit the hair jig since it is just off bottom. We are fishing this from just off shore back to about 8ft. Then the hard part starts. The baitfish are driven by wind and are not in the same place every day. I check drop-offs in the 14-18ft. deeper than that and all you will see are buffalo carp. I have waypoints where I have caught them in the past. I am watching my mapping as I have latest and greatest detail you can get for Shelbyville. I am also watching my 2-D sonar anglers forget how important that is. I will get perfect half arch fish symbols. The trick is to look at enough of them and know size and relationship to the bottom to know those are white bass not buffalo carp. My transducer is on the back so once I see that throw a marker out. Then we get myself and all my clients on the side of the boat and start vertically jigging the spoon/hair-jig combo up and down watching for it to hesitate falling back. I can also turn my Livescope transducer backwards and watch all of us jigging up and down and know when a school moves in under us. They follow the spoon up and down until one or two get hooked. We get all we can then move a few yards and repeat. Clients love this lots and I mean lots of hard fighting action.

“CRAPPIE”
Early in the morning the crappie are pretty shallow as well but not on any structure. They are chasing the baitfish just like the white bass. I have friends and guides that chase them with their Livescope each taking turns catching an open water crappie. Myself I usually have three clients that want to fish all day so we run from cube to brush to laydowns all day going through a lot of small fish until the bigger ones get on structure. Bright sunny days they will get on structure around 9am or so. Since I have myself and three others we pull along side the structure and drift a slip bobber and minnow across them. Has worked for many years and everyone can watch a cork go down. As for when will I start just jig fishing and allowing only two in the boat. About mid-October. We all set up on the nose and jig off brush. I do this all late fall and winter once the surface temps get below 60.

My fall dates are filling fast!!!!
September 8,10,12,15,16,17,22,23,27,29,30 on Shelbyville
October 1,2,3,6-13,16,20-25,27,28,29 on Shelbyville
November 11 on Kentucky Lake

Steve Welch
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