Any idea what these crater like pock marks are on the lake bottom ?
Notice depths. The 27 foot depth scan was made in the right side
of the Johnny's Cove area. The 40 foot depth scan was made not
far from the dam on the east side. These were taken in the past
two weeks.


Thanks for any input !

Hmmm....was it windy?

There was wind those days but I was fairly protected from where these shots were taken.

Those are either redear beds or tilapia beds.

Someone else posted some pics like that and said they were all over the place there. I�d agree with some kind of beds, I just don�t know what spawns that deep.

If it was squaw creek, I�d say Talipia beds, they are all over there...

My bet is talapia

Fayette is full of tilapia too, just did not think they spawned that deep

Both images look like beds I've seen many times on SI. And I've seen many clusters of bream and Tilapia beds. But I've never seen clusters of beds like that in deep water. Especially in the second photo. Too close together and too uniform. Neither Tilapia nor RedEar spawn that deep so I dunno exactly what we're looking at. There are some Fayette regulars here so maybe they'll know.

Doubt it's beds of any kind. Probably just hard bottom. I've seen Rayburn have similar bottom on exposed clay points.

Was the lake ever down 20+ feet? Spawning craters from a drought year?

Tilapia beds

100%. I get acres of these images on Squaw Creek and like many power plant lakes they are very prevalent in Fayette County. Always looks like a moon scape. Various depths.

There are no Tilapia in Va and this lake has several hundred acres that looks like that. I think it was done with blunt spike roller that was used to compact the terrain when the lake was being built:

The Tilapia beds that show up so much on images at Squaw look more like the 1st picture by the OP. Larger irregularly spaced beds. Not the small very uniformly sized and spaced �dimples� on the 2nd pic or the one above by Wayne P. For those who have not seen Tilapia beds on the power plant lakes: they look nothing like bass beds. They are huge compared to a bass bed. Looks like a truck tire sitting on the bottom of the lake and about the same size.