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This was a great event on Kentucky Lake during prime time ledge fishing time.  If I thought Grand Lake was big, Kentucky Lake makes Grand look like a puddle.  

  FLW and the BFL guys did a great job in running the event.  Top shelf all the way.  Some differences were we only got one day to prefish.  Having never been on the lake, I was left with talking with a few guys on BBC boards and watching BASSfest BASS trak to see where guys were fishing to get an idea of where to start.  Kentucky lake is about 95 miles long.  The Tennessee river makes up the main river channel running thru it.  That makes almost 200 miles of main river ledge to try and find fish.  Where do you start???  Based on what I seen on Bassfest I have about 40 area's I wanted to look at.  

  Brian and I had loaded up on all the usually suspects for lures.  Swimbaits, deep cranks, BIG spoons, white hair jigs and our usual stuff of football jigs and carolina rigs.  The challenge with Kentucky is that every school of fish will change from day to day, hour to hour.  One day a school on a spot wants green football jig, the next day a 10xd crank, and the next day the white hair jig.  And each spot was different.  You couldn't just pick up one lure and throw that all day thinking you were going to catch them.

 Brian drew two local guys each day.  He told me that he couldn't figure out why a spot would hold a school of bass over any other strech.  His day one partner was a local legend of the lake and that they started on one side of the ledge , checked spots all the way down to the damn and back on the other side on the way back.  Nothing in any of the these spots was distinct in why it would hold fish over the rest of the ledges in the area. Just local knowledge of his boater fishing that lake for 25 years.

  Banquet and drew my day one partner from Knoxville Tn. Great a local guy.  He might have some idea's.  NOT. He had never fished the body of water.  Why not I asked.  He spends all of his time at Chickamaga, Guntersville, Pickwick and Nickajack.  Well that makes sense.  Why drive 5 hrs when you can fish those lakes when they are much closer.

  Practice had me running south about 15 miles checking areas while working my way back towards the launch.  Checked the Edwin Evers, Brett Hite and KVD arears thinking I could get a clue as to what they were fishing.  Plus map study of these areas, I was able to locate some schools of fish.  The hard part was getting fish to fire up in Kentucky Lake fashion.  If you can get a school fired up, fishing can be unreal there.  We found one ditch that was about 300 yds long that was absolutely  stuffed with bass.  They were sitting in 22 to 25 feet of water.  Great thats where I will start when the tourney blasts off.  The problem is that the fish were there, but not feeding.  The key to this lake is understanding where the fish move to feed.  All those fish in that ditch are just sitting there in a negative mood.  Once active they will move up to 13 to 18 feet to feed.  Just a little local info that wasn't readily dicernable with just one day of practice.

  Day one had me fishing the ditch for an hour with no bites,  on to spot 2.  Small main lake ditch with a boat already fishing the area, same results, one short fish.  On to spot 3.

This small main lake ditch is the area Brett Hite fished in BASSfest.  It was loaded with fish that we graphed in practice.  The ditch was in 22 feet with 13 foot all around it.  Reaction baits resulted in nothing.  Switched to a dropshot with a big plum worm and my partner started dropshotting a morning dawn worm.  BAM, started catching a few fish.  We worked this area over for hours.  Didn't want to leave fish to find fish.  Also located in this area was a huge shell bed just north of the ditch 300 yards that also produced 3 fish for us.  Never really caught any big fish off the area, but knew I couldn't fish blindly on other spots without having a solid game plan of fish producing area's.

  Tally 4 fish for 8lbs, partner 3 fish for 8lbs.  Not a great start.

  Day two brought a big storm into the lake.  High winds, rain and tough running conditions.  Ran right back to the ditch we caught our fish and nothing.  Partner got a 5 lber off the shell bed with a jig.  Started running water trying to find anything!!!!  Rough water, high winds and rain made it extremely difficult to get anything done.  Decided to just drag a ledge that the wind would push us down.  2.5 miles of ledge.  Partner gets one small one, and I lose a good fish.  Worked that area over thinking we could get a school fired up.  NOPE.  

  With just 32 minutes to go, I finally put a solid 4lber in the boat. Mark the spot with a waypoint.  High winds blow me 200 yards down the lake while fighting the fish.  Manuever the boat back to the area and BAM, with both get fish.  Sweet school fired up.  Each time we catch a fish, the wind blows us off the spot.  Fight our way back and boom, fish.  Green pumpkin 3/4oz jig with paca craw trailer.  Throw a swimbait thru the school nothing. Back to the jig. Bam fish.  Caught 4 fish in 15 minutes and partner catches one and loses one.

  We figured we were 5 miles from the launch.  Stayed until 2:54 and 30 seconds knowing that I was cutting extremely close. But also knew that another 4lb fish was going to get me in the top 25 and another $1000 dollars.  Was in the seat and hammer down at exactly 2:55.  The brige was in sight the whole time and as the seconds ticked away I knew my 5 minute run was really a 6+ minute run.  It was a risk worth taking and would do it again.

  Took a one pound penalty for one minute late. Plus the dead fish penalty from day one and I lost 1.25 pounds.  Didn't really make a difference in the end but tried to get that 5th fish on the last day.

  In hind sight, with just the one day of prefish and a lake the size of a small ocean, a better plan would have been to just drive up and down the lake looking for locals fishing spots. Mark the area and keep moving.  Then use those waypoints to make a milk run of spots to run.  Not sure if it would have done anything to make for a better finish, but might have been a more effective plan to locate productive area's.

  The cool thing was the winner was also a TBF Nationals qualifier from Canada.  He ran 50 miles down the lake each day and had located 3 schools of quality fish.  He had the time to come down before the shutoff and prefish for 4 days during bassfest and would follow guys around and mark spots.  He used the Ben Parker Magnum spoon the first two days to catch his fish.  These spoons are about 6 - 8 inches long, 3 inches wide and weigh 3 oz's.  This was used to fire up a school and then he would dropshot to clean up.  The final day he caught all but one of his fish dropshotting.

  The backseater winner was also a TBF qualifier.  He was able to get 3 great draws each day of local legends and capitalize on been around good fish.  He was able to catch his fish with a white hair jig and carolina rig.

  The funny thing for me was being in the Keystone Light Tour wrapped boat.  Locals would follow me around and fish right up on me.  Thinking I was a pro of some sort, LMAO, and just come right on in on top of me and start fishing.  A few locals were really cool, as I would pull into an area and they would talk with me a bit, ask what I was fishing and then just wish me luck and leave the area.  But most would just pull right up on top of you and just start fishing.

  Kentucky Lake is a beast.  The ledge fishing is obviously great when you locate a fired up school.  As stated previously, where to start.  You only have 200 miles of ledges to fish!

  FLW and the BFL crew did a great job of running this event. Everything was taken care of for us.  Boats fueled, batteries charged, even put you in the lake and pick you up at the end of the day.  

  Special thanks to Russ Baker and Chris Ferry at Limit Out Marine for all their support and help to get Brian and I off to both these events.  Well done guys.

Mark

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Replies to This Discussion

Awesome write up Mark and congrats for making it so far. Sounds like a blast! 

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