Fish some lakes near the house quite a bit, water was at 84 degrees and there was a very defined thermocline around 5ft. Lake is around 55 acres and not much structure to speak of max depth around 25ft. Been super slow and fish seem to stay suspended no matter the weather conditions. Any ideas? 

Any way to test whether there is ample oxygen below that shallow thermocline? If not and the fish are stuck to living in 5’ of water or less, you’ll probably want to play with timing. The most oxygen in the water will likely be on sunny afternoons, later in the day. Might try fishing then since they might be the most active. I would also focus heavy effort on very windy days fishing the side of the lake getting blown into, as well as right at dusk to see if they move toward the bank after the sun goes down. Early evening could be good before the lake loses too much oxygen. Topwaters (poppers, wakebaits, frogs, etc.), light swimbaits or Slider rigs, or similar baits (weightless Senkos or wacky worms?) you can fish slow and higher up in the water column would be my first choices.

The lake needs an aerator system now!

Tom 

On 7/25/2023 at 8:29 PM, Team9nine said:

Any way to test whether there is ample oxygen below that shallow thermocline? If not and the fish are stuck to living in 5’ of water or less, you’ll probably want to play with timing. The most oxygen in the water will likely be on sunny afternoons, later in the day. Might try fishing then since they might be the most active. I would also focus heavy effort on very windy days fishing the side of the lake getting blown into, as well as right at dusk to see if they move toward the bank after the sun goes down. Early evening could be good before the lake loses too much oxygen. Topwaters (poppers, wakebaits, frogs, etc.), light swimbaits or Slider rigs, or similar baits (weightless Senkos or wacky worms?) you can fish slow and higher up in the water column would be my first choices.

Not sure how to actually test oxygen levels under the thermocline but my guess is there isn’t. Very rarely do you mark fish under it and the ones that occasionally are I believe are hybrid chasing wounded baitfish down and coming right back up. I’ve used some weightless wacky rig stuff and it works marginally. Top water bite is scarce for some strange reason, my guess is due to the huge amount of pressure the lake gets. Everybody and their brother is throwing a popper right off the rip. Just sets up very odd when it gets hot out, they don’t school and are very hard to pinpoint almost as if they are just cruising the entire lake constantly. Left my flukes at home last time they will be going back next time to see how that goes. They also seem to really key on the very small baitfish over the bigger shad when it’s hot as well so may try some smaller fluke style deals.