Headed out to joe pool last friday, no luck out by the cedar hill state park. anyone have any good tips for fishing this lake

Find another lake. From what I've heard, there are alot of small cats.

this lake is horrible for catfish

Alright thanks for the heads up.

Try Loyd Park if you want to catch catfish at JP. I forget which one it is but one of the campsite loops sits on the end of the lake where all of the timber is. You can cast out from the bank into the timber and catch some decent channels. There are definitly better lakes but JP is OK if you know where to fish it.

The boy and I tore up 16 to 22 inch channels down by britton. Caught on fresh shad which were caught right at the boat ramp.
Boated maybe 80 fish took home about 10 keepers for a fresh fish fry that night. This was two weekends ago.

try the timber around loyd park, I have done good there from the bank, even better probably from boat. caught good size channels on fresh dead shad in the heat of summer, daytime. Might be better at night.

Joe Pool was never good to me with larger catfish, I always cat the small ones, all throwback.

I've been to Lloyd a bunch of times at night. If you get in there before 10 you can get a pass and fish all night. I go to the picnic area and fish off the dock in the cove. Usually at night there's no one there. I've done well on small channels there, but I've never caught anything of any size.

Highview Marina The channel cat are bitting perry good right now good eating size.

I may just have to go there this weekend.

We have caught lots of nice fish on the Britton end, especially on limb lines up in the creeks. Pulled off a couple of 20 plus lb flat heads a couple of years ago and lots of 5 lb plus channels. You have to keep after them for sure on Joe Pool, not your typical lake for some reason and you just have to find them.

JP is a very deep lake. Has any one ever tryed some of them very deep holes? Even the sandbass have a reputation of catch a lot of fish most are throwbacks. Again should we focus on deeper water? Sometimes deeper lakes have a fish population in deep water but the fish are suspended. Could that be the key to JP, is to find the suspended activity ans stay there, not above or below?

JP isn't all that deep... I don't recall my depth finder ever going over 48'. I've done a lot of slabbing out there and caught a lot of cats on slabs and they are usually small ones.
The only big cats I have ever caught on pool have been in or around creek channels and they have been flatties. I have only ever caught one blue and it was out of a creek channel that is right next to a brushpile. I caught it on a lateral perch jigging it down into the channel. It was only about 8lbs.

really whats that 68' depth showing on the map? Do you ever fish near the dam with shad cut bait? or them holes in open water?