Lakes and Low Water
First let’s see how it affects the fishing on the lake. Basically there is less water for the fish to hide in. That is one way to look at it. The low water level let’s us see lots of structure that is normally underwater and that can be a bonus. Can you fish a lake when it’s low? Sure, just treat it with respect and remember to check the water levels frequently. If you have been on the lake before, keep in mind that you may not be able to run where you have in the past. Treat it like it’s a new lake, get a map with some good contour lines and study it. If you need to take a marker and color all the areas that should be out of water in red, then color the next few ft in yellow. Don’t run in shallow water, stay in the deepest water you can when you're running and don’t take short cuts. We've all seen what happens when someone take’s a short cut and finds a foundation in 4 ft of water that they haven’t seen before. Treat the lakes like they are new and do your home work. Don’t run blind and follow someone that is running though timber or shallow water.
Years ago I fished a lot of different lakes in South Texas. We would a get a map and go fishing and never even think about seeing what the lake level was. I can remember a trip where we left the dock right at sunset to fish a hump out in the middle of the south end of the lake. The hump was setting in 20ft of water and comes up to 12 ft, a perfect place to catch some good fish. We were lucky to have a map and cheap depth finder and that’s it. GPS was not even heard of for fishing boats. With our running lights on we busted out there to about where we figured it would be and slowed down. It was dark so picking up the spot light and looking around we found ourselves in the middle of timber. We were lucky and didn’t hit anything. Those old boats didn’t float worth a flip by themselves back then. That was a lesson that I will never forget. Did I mention the lake was 10 ft low at the time? Now we have some great New Lowrance GPS/Sonar units on the market that are amazing and compatible with Navionics cards that have depth contours lines just like the HD maps you buy. Most units have a depth setting to adjust the shading for the GPS mapping to help with low water conditions. Getting to know what your unit will do and how to use it is a very important part of today’s world of high tech. If you're not sure about things I have a Bass Class on the water that teaches you about your electronics. Don’t stay home and miss out on the fall fishing. This is just something we have to deal with and you can bet it will not be the last time. Get out and learn the lake and become a better fisherman.
The fall fishing is just getting started to get good. The fish will become more active as the water gets cooler so break out the rods, get some new line on and get out there.

Lynn Atkinson

Reel um N Guide Service

www.reelumn.com

lynn@reelumn.com

Cell (979) 220-0251

Good post Lynn. A lot of our new guys will appreciate the information. This is the pratical application that all us old guys started with and we can all relate to your story. We all are lucky to still be alive.

Just a heads-up, as I've mentioned elsewhere, if using Navionics HotMaps (latest versions) on Lake Lewisville, adjust by about 4-5 ft shallower the "depth contours", everywhere I've gone the past few weeks, things that should be at least 2-4ft submerged at current elevations are "surfacing", so it appears there is a problem with their contour mapping depth offset on LL, like it was 4ft high when scanned and not compensated for back to conservation pool, or something like that. If your experience differs feel free to reply here, but humps that should still be be several feet safely submerged according to the contours, are actually at the surface in my experience. I'ev also used the PC App at home to look at the humps I grounded on in Stewart's Cove, so it's not a sonar offset problem, the shallowest should still be 5ft deep "today" according to their maps, but is at the surface now.

I wish Navionics would allow custom per-foot "safety depths" (or preferably a lake level offset like on Hummingbirds). The default gaps are too wide for bass fishermen.

From the Corps website , LL level is currently about 7ft low. But from what I've literally run into, the current "safety depth" needs to be at LEAST 13ft+ (in other words, you are hitting ground in places that show a contour line at 13ft, meaning it's only about 1-2ft deep at those places instead of the expected 5-6ft).

I've dragged bottom and skeg a few times (and stalled out main motor once forcing me to trim way up and power off) on humps that had a starting contour line at 13ft (meaning the top should be at least 12ft deep from conservation pool according to the navionics, or should be at least 5ft deep at current lake elevation)).

Just be careful, and on any lake check the current elevation before heading out and find a few humps first thing in the day that should be safely submerged on the map to idle over and make sure that you are getting the expected differences.

With the lakes this low - This is great opportunity to use your GPS systems and Mark/Waypoint all those bad stumps/trees that you normally can’t see when the lakes are back to near normal levels.

Also it’s a great time to mark/create trails on your GPS to safely navigate through those tree areas for when the lakes come back up (you can see them all right now – so create trials on your GPS through the tree areas now).

I think it’s really much safer when the lakes are below the tree rot line level – so you can see them all. Normally most trees break off (rot) at the lake’s normal water line level, making them hard to see or impossible when the lake is a little above it’s most normal level.

Right now you can Mark/Way Point those standalone trees - so you will know where they are when the lake comes back up.

Happy Thanksgiving & Happy Trials and Waypoints to you,