Fall fishing is on it way or already here in some parts of the country and with it comes the turnover in many of our lakes. I always have a difficult time locating the fish shortly after this has happened. Anyone figure out how to deal with this?

A complete turn-over scatters all the fish polulations all over a lake, making them very difficult to locate in numbers. You catch one here and there after covering a lot of acreage quickly with search type lures like spinnerbaits abd buzzbaits. Another effect is often organic material on the lake bottom rises to mix, heavily staining the lake. But fortunately that doesn't typically last long, usually only a few weeks.

Jim

Yeah I usually only manage to get a fish here and there after the turnover and I am lucky if they are keepers. Covering a lot of water in a hurry makes sense. I will try that next time out and see what happens. Thanks Jim.

Man, it's 90 degrees here in SE florida,  I can't even THINK about fall conditions.

Nothing comes to mind, that can louse up a fishing trip more effectively than the fall-turnover.

Fortunately, not all lakes stratify, and all lakes that stratify do not experience a fall-turnover.

(e.g. lakes in Florida and southern Georgia rarely turnover).

Tomorrow, my wife and I will be leaving on a pike trip, and driving from Florida up to

western Ontario. On our target lake, the mean date for the start of the fall turnover

is September 20th. Unfortunately, the timing of the turnover varies from year-to-year

depending on prevailing air temperatures and the hypolimnion budget (i.e. the volume

of 39-degree water pooled on the lake's floor). I choose the time frame from September 11

to September 18, but my fingers are crossed. If there is one situation that is worse

than a cold front it's got to be the fall turnover. During the turnover, dead weeds and dead fish

are usually in evidence, and fishing is typically extremely s-l-o-w! I am unaware of any fishermen

or angling tactics that are reliably successful during the fall turnover.

Fortunately the turnover is mercifully short, typically lasting between 5 and 10 days.

Roger

39 degrees. Wow. At the bottom of Blakely Dam it only gets to 52. Currently the surface is 80. Thermocline at 18', up from its deepest at 27. Because of the slow cool-night cooling from a high of 90 surface (100 air) the thermocline has been narrowing very slowly and we might not have a turn-over this fall. The thermocline is only 10 feet thick. If the surface matches temps under the thermocline it won't happen. Unconfirmed reports have the coldest deepest water at 56 now, so a continued gentle cooling can easily meet that half way. We're getting a lot of solar penetration due to ultra clear water. I consider this a really bad event for fishing. We need DO going deep to permit deep water sanctuary in the event of a hard winter. DO is good down to about 12 feet, dropping to 4 ppm at 20'. Nobody looks forward to a turn-over, but it's actually a revitalizer of deep lakes. The idea is for highly oxygenated water to suddenly cool colder than deep water, resulting in a mixing of layers. If fish can't go deep and we have a zero degree week or two following a gradual cooling we could see a lot of baitfish die-off, and that would greatly affect the bass population, as well as stripers.

This is one I'm going to hope the lake biologists can find hope in. They're way better at fisheries than I ever thought about being and tend not to be as pessimistic. I hope I'm very wrong.

Jim