Storylines: Right, but Not Right
The ledge fishing on Kentucky Lake is just a little off...
Kentucky Lake showed off what it’s known for on day one of the Walmart FLW Tour event presented by Mercury and hosted by the Kentucky Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau?. Only, it didn’t.
Anglers have come to know Kentucky Lake as a ledge-fishing paradise. A place where fish flock offshore come summer, forming mega schools by the hundreds that can’t resist jigs, big worms, crankbaits or flutter spoons. Well, the ledges are still there, the fish sure are on them, and the same-old lures are working. Only problem is the schools are acting funny. The giant schools won’t bite, the little schools are suspended and any school seems liable to disappear at a moment’s notice.
Local Terry Bolton says he doesn’t quite know what to make of the schools, as he’s tried to lay off of them. He certainly noticed the fish being more scattered than usual, or not where he found them in practice.
Mark Rose echoed similar findings.
“It’s typical Kentucky Lake except there aren’t as many fish in the schools I’m finding,” says Rose. “I’m finding four- and five-fish schools, but really I’m just catching singles here and there instead of in the flurries like you used to.”
Another local, Brandon Hunter, has had better luck finding big schools, but again, the flurries simply are not happening.
“I’ve found a lot of schools that are broken up, and I’ve seen a few 60-fish schools that won’t bite,” Hunter says. “I found only one place where I could keep catching them once I got them fired up. I probably caught 15 keepers there, but everywhere else you’d catch one or two.”
While all three pros felt the fishing was tougher than they made it seem, they also all felt the fishing would get better with the scorching weather set to hit the area over the weekend. That optimism was not shared by Randy Haynes.
“It’s going to be the same type of fishing [over the weekend],” says Haynes. “There’s just too much pressure. With the locals and the tournaments, the fish are getting pushed around. They’re getting wise.”
Haynes says he spent the majority of his day relocating schools he felt the pressure had pushed to new areas. Fortunately, “hundreds of hours of idling” have taught him how to do just that, but still, it’s one fish here and one fish there as opposed to the flurries of old.
“Ledge fishing has changed the last few years,” Haynes says. “The fish know what’s going on.”