Most of my life I lived in an area that had natural lakes.  The size varied from 50 acres to 6000 acres.  I did ok on them.  I moved to an area were they have flowages.  Some are connected chain's others stand alone.  All dammed for power.  These range in size from 300 acres to 1800 acres, max depth 40-60 ft., stained water (tannin from trees not dirty).  They usually aren't comfortable enough to swim in until August, then cool off in September.  Surprise, I live in Northern Wisconsin not the far from the U.P. of Michigan.

The information I have found on reservoirs talk about fishing the kick butt stuff like you southern and western guys have.  Yours are measured in MILES not acres, and take hours to go from one end to the other.

I get by fishing the flowages with my natural lakes methods, but I really think I could do better.  Where could I get the "How To's" (books, videos, etc.) to fish these smaller, Hill land (I think so anyway) flowages.

You probably can get by with the same info used for the larger reservoirs.  Being manmade they should have the same kind of sturcture just less area to search.  You can also try the location forums and the site also has links for fishing sites for most states.

One thing I have discovered about power company impoundments that effects fishing more than anything else. CURRENT!  This has applied to every power company lake I have fished.  I call and get the generation schedule for the impoundment before fishing and when they flip the switch, so do the fish.  It's as if these fish are trained, I suppose the movement of water stirs up all kind forage.  I fish the downstream side of structure such as pilings, stumps etc. where the fish locate themselves to get a break from the current and, I guess, to ambush prey.  The bite generally will pick up on the lower end of the lake near the flood gates sooner than on the upper end and keep in mind that there is still movement after the gates are closed.  If they are generating from 1:00 to 4:00 I generally will get my best fishing from 2:00 to 5:00.

One other discovery I have made is that on man-made impoundments where they have dammed an existing river to create a lake is that when it flooded, the old river channel is usually very defined and may be 40' deep while the rest of the lake will have a depth of 12'-20' gradually sloping upwards toward the bank.  In the winter and summer I concentrate on the area around the main channel and in the spring and fall when the water is more suitable I fish secondary creeks and pound the banks.

I hope this helps.

Robert

That is a neat piece of advise Powerman. I have a friend that works on the power company turbins and I bet he could get me some sort of schedule.

I could plan my day around water releases. I have a ton of small lakes, creeks and rivers to fool around on, then could hit the flowages at prime time.

Oh yeah, I am retired so I am forced to spend most of my time hunting or fishing. It's a tough job but someone has to do it. :-?

I guess the smaller flowages are like the larger ones in some ways, but I have tried the suggestions for the large impoundments and a lot of them don't work. It is like the 50 acre lakes fish a little different then the 6000 acres lake. Sort of big city vs small town, people are people, but different.

Listen to Powerman970. I think everyone in here would agree on his opinion on this one. If your lake is controlled by a power plant, you have half the battle won. Once you can figure out their release schedule, you are home free, or at least it will narrow the places to fish immensely. Ask RW about this phenomenon. I think he fishes a dam release situation.