Bass behavior after following rapid water level rise.

[Darth-Baiter]

my experience is to stay home.  our lakes are coming up 10-15 feet every week.   coming up fast, and the big storm is here tomorrow.  while I think this bodes well for spring and summer, we are skunk-city right now.  I decided to go to work this morning instead of taking advantage to the break in the bad weather.  my buds all got skunked.  

 

thought?.  when I lake is flushed filled, what do you think the bass are doing?  freaking out why the lake smells and taste like motor oil, and winery fertilizer?  

[Functional]

People with more experience than me will chime in but I've always read getting as shallow as you can into the newly flooded areas. 

 

Experience in my own home lake follows that to most degrees. My lake is a dammed part of a river though so it's kind of a lake and kind of a river. 

[Big Hands]

42 minutes ago, Darth-Baiter said:

thought?.  when I lake is flushed filled, what do you think the bass are doing?  freaking out why the lake smells and taste like motor oil, and winery fertilizer?

 

Or wildfire debris?

 

[WRB]

The wine country lakes in NorCal have suffered several years of major wild fire and as the photo posted above shows the debris is massive. 

The ash in the water is very acidic along with fire retardants that settle down on the lake bottom, not a healthy condition for the ecosystem.

Unfortunately this is how our reservoirs age and silt in.

Tom 

[Susky River Rat]

3 hours ago, Functional said:

People with more experience than me will chime in but I've always read getting as shallow as you can into the newly flooded areas. 

I can’t say how this works for lakes but, I live and die by this for rivers. Even going up into creeks 50-100 yards if possible is prime. It also helps finding clearer water when the creeks are slowing down but the river is pushing hard. It creates back feed into the creeks. It also tends to become community spots. Walleye, musky, catfish, and bronze backs all will use these same areas. 

[GRiver]

I fished St John’s after it flooded and Zilch!, nada, nothing, the Big Skunk……  I think they are still feeding, just not my bait, I can hear what I think are fish, splashing back in the flooded woods. Don’t even think you could get a kayak back in there, not that I would. After flooding here in Fl, it brings all the critters out that have been displaced from there homes, snakes and gators.

[Woody B]

For me, as long as conditions are safe there's never a bad time to go fishing.  I might not catch any, but a bad day fishing is still a pretty good day.  

 

My best day of the year, numbers wise came the day after Hurricane Ian passed over.   I'm inland, it wasn't a Hurricane here but we got quite a bit of wind and rain.  The power company pulled water from the lakes to prepare for the storm.  The lake weren't flooded but only a foot or so above normal.  There was some debris in the lake.  Not terrible, but enough I stayed under 10 mph.   

[AlabamaSpothunter]

Massive rains all yesterday and this morning, I expect my lake to up several feet, docks will be underwater.    

 

In the summer I've found this advantegous, however in the winter I've found this makes fishing significantly harder.   

 

The frontal conditions that follow these huge water fluctuations play as large of role as the water rising imho.  

[frenchy]

Last spring @ Table Rock the lake came up 10', all within a 2-3 days, I thought only to be wrong it would a couple days for the bass to orientate their selves to the higher water, a buddy and I found them in the very back of flooded coves off of the main channels, where water had gone up into the draws where the power lines were located. The creeks where we were, that was   another story, flooded timber everywhere. We caught some dandys all on spinnerbaits

[AlabamaSpothunter]

Lake was massively up, I say about 2.5-3ft.   The huge warm rain brought the temps up in some parts to 61 degrees.....48hrs ago it was 55.   

The biggest thing was the viz.   It's normally a pretty dark blue/green color with 2ft+ of viz, it had maybe 6" today.    Whole thing was chocolate milk.

 

I didn't fish real hard lol, I can't imagine a worse day to going fishing, the bluest bird sky imaginable with 10-15mph winds.   Fished all around the areas that had massive inflows and outflows a bit, then just called it.    

[Dogface]

On 1/3/2023 at 7:39 PM, Functional said:

People with more experience than me will chime in but I've always read getting as shallow as you can into the newly flooded areas. 

 

 

I was fishing Lake Heney in Quebec a few years ago. I fished this lake often and knew it fairly well.

 

It was in early May and there was a late thaw. The lake was much higher than normal. I went to one area I knew and the lake was way over the bank and up on a homeowner's lawn maybe 30 or 40 yards and 1 to 2 feet deep.  

 

We started casting where the water's edge normally was and we caught bass. I then started casting up on the lawn and started catching more bass. My son was with me and we joked that no one would believe we were catching bass on some guy's lawn....but we were. 

[scaleface]

On 1/4/2023 at 1:39 PM, frenchy said:

Last spring @ Table Rock the lake came up 10', all within a 2-3 days, I thought only to be wrong it would a couple days for the bass to orientate their selves to the higher water, a buddy and I found them in the very back of flooded coves off of the main channels, where water had gone up into the draws where the power lines were located. The creeks where we were, that was   another story, flooded timber everywhere. We caught some dandys all on spinnerbaits

I was there too last spring with the falling water . Caught lots of largemouths using  buzzbaits in flooded cover , smallmouths with tubes on points and spots on tubes on the banks where they were spawning .