I'm from Michigan and I'm headed down to Illinois to fish a tournament on Shelbyville this coming weekend. I'm looking for any helpful information from someone who has any clue on this lake. I'm figuring the water is high and pretty cool so probably a prespawn tournament but this is only a guess. I'm going on Thursday so I probably should have posted earlier.

Thanks

I'd try to find out the water temps. I'd guess that they are spawning right now, with some in the post spawn.

I fished a tourney on that lake yesterday. Weather was terrible over the weekend, with heavy storming and water temperatures plummeting to around 55 degrees. The water level has gone up several feet. I talked to the guy who won 2nd place and he said he caught most of his fish tossing jigs into the beds of yellow flowers lining the shorelines of the many inlets on the lake. Apparently the fish were bedding there.

As the water level goes back down though, the yellow flower beds may end up back on dry land, which means that you may have to look for alternate bedding spots.

The typical producers for this lake though are moving baits. Black and gold traps seem to do well most of the time, followed by mid depth crankbaits in sexy shad and chartreuse sexy shad cranked across main lake and secondary points.

That being said, I caught all my fish yesterday on a 1 oz. Jig in Rusty Craw color. The lake pretty much has humps and laydowns running across the mouths of all its various coves and inlets, so I was dragging it parallel to those for most of the day. There are also some humps inside the larger inlets, so don't discount those either. The bottom contour from the mouth to the end of an inlet typically goes something like this:

I did it because the water levels had risen so much that I would not have been able to get to the depth I wanted with my normal cranking setup. I was pretty much fishing 22+ FoW all day. If the water levels do go down, crankbaits may end up doing better again.

Nibbles,

Thanks you pretty much hit my plan right on the nose. I've never been on the lake so I was headed in shallow with a jig and flippin the bushes. I fished a couple years ago on KY lake and it did the same thing to me. Flooding and dirty water, hard for us Michigan people we are used to clean and clear water. Add any mud and we go to ____ pretty quick. If you happen to check this again did it clear up any down south by the dam?

The lake temp really suprises me. We have a better surface temp here than that. we were close to 60 down on the indiana border over the weekend.

Well thanks again and I will give you an update after the weekend.

Nibbles,

Thanks you pretty much hit my plan right on the nose. I've never been on the lake so I was headed in shallow with a jig and flippin the bushes. I fished a couple years ago on KY lake and it did the same thing to me. Flooding and dirty water, hard for us Michigan people we are used to clean and clear water. Add any mud and we go to ____ pretty quick. If you happen to check this again did it clear up any down south by the dam?

The lake temp really suprises me. We have a better surface temp here than that. we were close to 60 down on the indiana border over the weekend.

Well thanks again and I will give you an update after the weekend.

The southern part of the lake was a bit iffy for everyone on Sunday. Lots of people gunned for it in the morning, but we saw a bunch of them head the other way within an hour. We tried fishing it in the afternoon, and gave up due to white caps. The depth for us in that area was around 45-50 feet of water, coming up slightly near the banks to about 30. The depth finder didn't read 20 until we were only about 10 feet offshore. Overall the water is really deep there right now. Water was pretty murky. On the southwestern part of the lake the depth should come up a bit. If I recall correctly there is a cove somewhere around there with some flats that you can try. We didn't fish that place because another boat was camped out there pretty much all afternoon.

If you do fish a jig, try using contrasting colors between skirt and trailer. Fish wouldn't touch my Rusty Craw jigs when I tipped it with a green pumpkin 5" DT Grub, but that changed when I swapped the trailer out for a Junebug colored one. When I was fishing, the fish didn't really seem to like the jig hopped, rather yo-yoing was much more effective. My guess is you'll have a better chance emulating a baitfish with your jigs than a craw.

Lastly, I wouldn't worry about the mud. I was tossing small pointer 65 jerkbaits on prefish day in 15+ feet of water and hammered some white bass. This tells me that despite the clarity being so poor, even a tiny bait was visible enough to fish when worked right. If I were you, I'd fish it like the water was gin clear. Make efforts not to spook the fish, as they're a bit sketchy and will get lockjaw despite the poor visibility.