POWER PLANT LAKES

[Cephkiller]

I would like some good advice on how to find fish in a power plant lake.  The lake is a 1,550-acre reservoir.  The water is generally muddy and there is abundant wood cover, but virtually no vegetation.  Obviously, one cannot use seasonal patterns to find fish, or can he?  Is temperature the primary consideration (the water temp varies greatly according to proximity to the outlet)?  Are they located primarily in temperate zones (70-80 degrees)?  Are they continuously in a summer pattern?  Are deeper areas cooler on the bottom or does the hot water discharge keep things stirred up and the temp uniform?  What about spawning habits.  Any help is appreciated.

[Matt Fly]

Power plant lakes in texas will start spawing in late Dec/Jan. Cooler water is always on the other side of the lake in winter. There is usually a jetty that separates intake and the discharge. That point has always been good for me. The fall winds also need to be added into the equation. I don't know where your intake/discharge are located compass wise, but consistent winds will push surfaces temps around setting up fishing. Power plant lakes are predictable with time on the water. Assume discharge waters push along the west banks, warmer water of course, and this is the norm until prevailing Northern north west winds have blown a few days out of that direction, The colder water that is on the east side now get a steady influx of warmer water due to the surface winds that pushed the warm water across the lake. Take into effect how cold the wind is. One time you may get a 10 degree rise, other times maybe more or less depending on the cold front passing. A good east wind keeps the warmer water on the west side of the lake. East side not warming up at all. Hope this gives you something to consider. The intake in the winter should be good. With muddy coniditions, a chartruese lizzard has worked well for me during prespawn and spawn.

I'll add that knowing when the plant is generating also helps position fish.  I have made trips without checking to see if the plant was generating and it wasn't.  The current helps position the fish.  I've had poorest days when not generating.

[Muddpuppy]

I fish several different power plant lakes and for me each one seems to have a little of it's own personality. One lake gets too warm to fish anytime other then in the winter, yet has some monsterous bass in it. But they just seem to get lathargic and you just watch them swim around after about Aril. One they pump cold water into from a deeper colder lake and durring those times the fishing is fantastic. Anouther which is I guess is my favorite lake to fish is a anouther smaller lake, it has some nice fish and usually you can put at least a few in the boat. Some days they can be tuff to say the least and so on. One thing most of these lakes have are submerged weed beds, you might not always be able to see them from the surface depending on depth, but fishing the tops, edges and pockets are usually productive. These often grow within a couple of feet of the surface. I didn't know if you hadn't seen weeds at the lake you are refering to or if there just weren't many.

When it gets hot we usually go deep, sometimes real deep. We look for timber and weed beds along the channels of the intake side although fish can sometimes be caught in large numbers on the discharge side in deeper water too. This year the weather was warm enough that we didn't hardly even fish the discharge side that I can think of. The lakes winter surface temperature stayed about 55 or so and the we pretty much fished in the same places that we do in in fall and spring.

Brush hogs and Flukes are probably our best bets, Senkos, spinnerbaits and a few cranks work pretty good too. Cotton Candy, Watermellon candy and Smoke w/ red pepper have been good colors most of the time in stained water.

If you happen to take fish for the table I would check to make sure there isn't a consumption advisory especially if you haven't had alot of rainfall to keep the lake flushed out.

[basspro48]

I'm not an expert on this at all but I did fish the "hot" side of Lake Anna one time. I was catching fish on a buzzbait in the middle of a snow shower, it can really mess with your head. But I do know that in some power plant lakes the water temp. does not get below a certain temp. so basically I would fish accordingly. Let the water temp. dictate your presentations, and record what the bass do seasonally.

Hope this helps.

[abelfisher]

Cephkiller, are you talking about Merom?

[Cephkiller]

Yes, abellfisher.  I have only fished there a few times.  I have caught some decent fish there, but I can never seem to establish  a workable pattern.  I usually catch only only one or two.

[Cephkiller]

I was hoping this thread wouldn't end as quickly as it did, but thanks anyway for the advice everyone.

[Samsonian]

I fish a powerplant lake . The water at the discharge can get as hot as 95 so I have to travel to the other end to get any shallow bites. I've heard a saying that most of the fish will be in 10% of the lake. I believe this to be true on this lake because that's were most of the tournament fisherman go.  Most fish deep on points . 20 to 30 ft. This is a clear lake and most of the structure is gone. Now that I have learned to use my electronics more I have located brush piles on the points. Takes patients but it's worth it.

[Jeff_NHBA]

I had a chance to fish the hot side of Lake Anna this weekend.  The water temps ranged anywhere from 70 to 75 degrees, depending on which pool we fished.  The best places we found were areas with moving current.  The power plant was drawing water at the time and there was a noticable current as a result.  We hit the edges of the channels between pools as well as areas beneath bridges.  The hot side is very clear in areas so it gave me a chance to try some drop-shotting (caught a couple nice keepers) in the deeper areas.  I tossed a C-Rig mostly though and the current really added some life to the bait (watermelon YUM zellmander).

 I think the warmer temps allow you to fish a little quicker but since bass are opprotunistic, they seemed to hang out in the slack water next to moving water ready to pounce on whatever comes their way.

Tight Lines.

[Muddpuppy]

I don't know if I've included anything in here that will help you or not, even though it's long winded. I had intended on trying to pay close attention to anything different when fishing these lakes, but it has been so hot and dry here that we haven't been fishing them much, since the original post. We will probably start later this winter. There are several lakes around here that are used for power generating, but I am basicly useing 2 as reference that are about the size you are talking about I think one is about 16,600 and the other around 18,000. The problem they are as different as night and day.

Compared to some of the other lakes the best fishing times to fish should be comeing up durring the colder months. Sometimes fishing at night will improve your catch when the temperatures are warm. If the weather is extreamly cold try fishing the discharge side near the discharge. I think I fish shallower in winter and deeper in the the summer then I do on a cold water or larger gernerating lake. When the weather is cold and nasty shallow works pretty good for me. On avarage I probably catch most at 8 - 14 ft next to standing timber. I have wanted to get a retractable thermometer and check out how the temp is at different depths but haven't found one yet. We haven't paid that much attention to water temperature except under unusual conditions like 58 deg. on one lake in Dec. or 89 deg in Feb. ( quit fishing that one for the rest of the year)

Try unusual things. I know the fish might hit something one day and not at all the next. Some of the people that regularly fish some of the smaller lakes here often throw the same thing and if that dosn't work they won't try anthing else. When they quit catching fish they change lakes, until the catch improves. Since there is limited access to these lakes any tounements would be small. I have talked to some guys that that will say they have been killing them on a so and so until "today" and they might have brought in only a couple off of for instance a blue/black worm just like they threw all the other times. We came along with flukes and they hit the spot. I have the best luck off of soft plastics like brush hogs, flukes, worms unweighted if at all possible, but that's also what I prefer anyway, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't try a white crankbait next without good results. If you change color or bait type fishing the same spot they may start up again. We have had good luck one day and then say we or a friend go back the next day or so later and catches them at a totally different depth.

Look for points, standing timber along cannels and we often do pretty good in coves that have channels in them.

I think that these fish are easily effected by weather. I have seen them turn on and of when it starts to rain. You wouldn't get a bite until it starts to sprinkle then "bam" when quits they do to. I also wouldn't think it would take much sun to warm the water enough to move the fish. I never thought about it before but some of the change in depth could be caused by the generator being off line like Matt was saying.

There used to be some on here that fish some of these lakes alot more then I do, but I haven't seen them on here for a while.

[Matt Fly]

my magical baits for power plant lakes are the old mann's jelly worms.  Purple with a white straight tail is #1, if that isn't the ticket, then purple w/firetail,  anything purple,  prespawn or spawn is just the zoom chartruese pepper lizzard.  

I didn't remember if I said the thermocline is very important.  Find the thermocline on power plant lakes.