Cold and windy with some light snow showers…… a perfect season opener. There are definitely some decent deer being taken today. Pictures on our website. Remember, you can’t cross State Park land to get to Corp land this year. They ARE enforcing it!! Also, the law says you can’t leave a stand unattended on Corp land, which means you aren’t supposed to put it out the night before. There is a fair amount of orange in the woods so please be sure of where your bullet will go before pulling the trigger. We want you all to get home safe and sound. It is supposed to be cold pretty much through the rest of the season by the sounds of it. Talk about different, last year it was 80 on the opener.—- As far as fishing goes, it will be a bit chilly on the water but I would think the crappie are still biting when you find them. We have had several people come in and tell us the channel cats are hitting pretty good also, and with the lake level creeping up I would expect it to stay that way. Shad seems to be the bait of choice right now. We had some bass fishermen in this past week and they were quite pleased with the catches they had. They were using spinnerbaits. The water temp is about 50, the level is just over 607 and the water seems to be about it’s normal clarity. I did not see anything unusual as far as color this morning. We got .5″ of rain overnight so I expect the level to rise a bit more.

WOW!! The weather is great and the crappie are biting pretty good now. We have had more groups coming in with a limit already today. Get up into those creek channels and search around. Go back into the coves until you are in 5 feet of water and then work your way out. If you see shad busting the surface you should be in the right area. If you are using jigs I have heard either red and yellow or blue and black are working. Tip them with almost anything. Just thought I would let you know in case anyone is wondering if they should come up now or wait until the weather turns. The weather is supposed to stay like this until Wednesday and then cool off some and rain late Wednesday and Thursday. Great to hear they are biting.

• Crappie- Excellent bite right now. Go shallow. Cull through the small ones and a limit of 10+ should be very manageable.
• Bass- Seems the bite is pretty tough for them right now, but try buzzbaits.
• Catfish- Haven’t heard anything this week so I assume they are pretty tightlipped. That will likely change when we get some rain later in the week. I did just hear the channel cats are biting pretty good on  crayfish up in the creek arms.

There is certainly a chill in the air these past few days. The fishing this week has been pretty tough, partly because of the weather and partly because the fish aren’t cooperating too well. Heck, that could be because of the weather too.  The sun should be out again starting on Monday. The water level is at 609.5 right now and looks to be dropping about 6″ per day. The crappies are hard to pinpoint as far as a pattern goes. One day you’ll catch them back in the creek arms, the next they will be at the flats. The most consistent comment I have been hearing is that they are stacked up on the wood, but getting them to bite is the challenge. Don’t be afraid to try every tactic you ever heard about to coax a bite from them and really watch close as the bites you do get are extremely light. As we move deeper into fall they should start feeding heavy again to stock up for the winter. There were some nice blues taken in the past couple of weeks and everyone is catching channel cats. I have heard of blues in the 30-40 pound range. That fishing too should get better as we get deeper into fall. I haven’t heard much as far as flatheads yet, but that should pick up also. Good luck!

Here we are heading into another weekend and the weather forecast is for just fantastic autumn weather. The Corp is continuing to pull the water level down at the rate of about a foot a day. The level is at about 614 now and I assume they will bring it down to about 606. Most likely it is this dropping water that is keeping the fish scattered. There are a lot of people catching crappies now, but you have to really search for them and adjust your fishing depth accordingly. Electronics use is pretty key right now with them scattered so much. Start at the backs of the creek arms and move out along the creek until you find them with your locator. The pattern still seems to be catch a few and move on. Slip bobber, minnow and a chromglow nibble seems to be the safest bet to catch fish. No word on anyone catching much for catfish, which I would have thought with the rain we got would have sparked a decent bite. Maybe we just didn’t hear of the catches, I don’t know. Water temp is at about 69.

The early part of the week went pretty good for fishing, but later it was just to windy to fish decent. The crappies are deeper hanging at 14-16 feet down in 25-30 feet of water. Fish the outside wood on points. Same old story, catch 1 or 2 then you may as well move on. Though of that batch you can see in the picture that Odie and I caught we had 2 spots that we caught 5 or 6 off of. The weather this weekend is supposed to be great and it looks like the fish are settling into a nice fall pattern. You better come and enjoy it while it’s here. - Tournament results for the 154 Marine tourney are in and there are some pictures as well. 1st place was 8.16#, second place was 7.62#, and third place came in at 7.34#. Of the 14 boats that entered all but 1 brought in the 7 fish limit. Have a great weekend!

Yesterday our website and email services were down.  This is due to our DNS provider having issues with their DNS servers.  We have switched to their backup servers and now everything should be back fully functional.  At some point, we will switch back to their primary servers, which will cause a small amount of downtime. We apologize for any inconvenience.