Anyone ever driven over a lock at a dam and thought “I wonder how many fish get moved from one body of water to another each year due to the locks operating?”  
 

Surely I’m not the only one?

Not a weird question. Asian carp are working their way towards lake Michigan on rivers in Illinois and make it through locks along the way easily. The Corps of Engineers has had to electrify the DesPlaines river south of Chicago to make carp stop moving toward the lake. It’s working so far. 

There are fish inside the locks, so they move from one body of water to another..  I was allowed to fish in one .  I caught carp that were sucking on the surface. Just drop a treble hook baited with may flies down to them and they sucked them right in.

It is structure with a timely flow of water, so you know predators are hanging out just looking for an easy meal.  Sounds like culvert pipes after a heavy rain.  One of my favorite go to spots for bass and peacock!

 I have caught bass in a lock at Lake Okeechobee while waiting for the water to lower and the gate to open.

https://www.fws.gov/project/susquehanna-river-fish-passage
 

here are some of the stats on the susky. 

On 12/18/2024 at 10:09 PM, Scott F said:

Asian carp are working their way towards lake Michigan on rivers...

Yeah...dang things have taken over down here (Arkansas/ Louisiana).  Thanks a lot catfish farmers. 😠

On 12/19/2024 at 10:00 PM, geo g said:

 I have caught bass in a lock at Lake Okeechobee while waiting for the water to lower and the gate to open.

 

Cool! 

Used to wonder the same a lot in my high school days. I grew up in Columbus, MS and we would fish the lock & dam there on the Tombigbee River a lot during late winter/early spring when the crappie were moving. 

This has been studied rather extensively, and the answer is, potentially, quite a few. I’m not certain how many bass actually move through the locks, but I know a lot of guys in the major tourneys have caught bass along the lock walls and immediately adjacent to them while waiting to lock through. It seems most common with baitfish type species, as well as migratory fish that often prefer to make large runs upriver to spawn. In many cases, lock and dams build accessory channels or similar to actually allow for passage of fish - think of “salmon ladders” as maybe being a common example. There are also live cams from some dams featuring these passages that you can watch in real-time for fish that are swimming through. 

They don’t stock stripers in ft loudoun but there are a bunch of them in there, they all come thru the lock from watts bar. 
 

they could easily stop the Asian carp in TN river by closing the locks ,  but they don’t