Hi gents,

 

this is a new one for me as I’ve never had a lake dropping like this one is. It’s losing about 4-6” elevation a day at the moment and is down 13’ total. It’s lost 6’ over the past two weeks. Obviously the fish are going to pull back from shoreline cover since it’s dry now. How far and how quickly do they pull back?  For the offshore fish that started in 15’ of water, are they going to keep sliding down the points they were on as the water drops?  Roam the lake looking for new offshore structure?

 

Im going to treat the lake like a lake I’ve never been to even though I’ve fished it a couple times this year.  I want to head over tomorrow maybe and see what it looks like that low to take notes for next spring.  At the same time, with the water dropping I’d estimate about a quarter of the surface area is gone and another 10% is less than a foot deep. So the fish are concentrated into 2/3 of the area.  Using navionics and setting a color for anything that’s now dry, there are some interesting ledges and points that would have been too deep before that are now fishy looking. However, they would have been a long way from where I would expect bass in normal pool. 
 

any of you western guys that are facing heavy droughts have ideas?

As a for instance, here is a navionics snapshot of one of the big branches/arms of the lake. Pre-spawn, this is a pretty good place to be. The steep banks and south/east facing slope give the bass close proximity to deeper water and shallow water quickly while also being some of the earlier water to warm. The fish slide out of the main lake along the wall and move up as they are ready. After the spawn, there are still plenty of bass that keep to these shallows while some will back out to the deeper water.

 

now, everything in blue is dry. The big white flat finger bit is almost there. So all of the shallow bass will have pulled back to the white water.  But after weeks of steadily moving out to keep wet, will they eventually just go to the deepest water nearby (I.e. the bottom of the wall) or will they just keep moving out of this type of finger altogether?