Gibson County Lake
Water temperature: 50 degrees and warming

Bass: “Bass fishing has been very slow, with the best fish still coming off of pig and jigs and other scented plastics in deep water,” said Brent Smith from Trenton. “Things should start to pick up this week.”

Kentucky Lake/Lake Barkley
Water temperature: 48 degrees. Water color is still murky, but most areas are still fishable.

“Some of the larger creeks are getting pretty muddy,” Darrell Van Vactor said. “Recent rains all throughout the system has caused both lakes to rise, even though the dams are running heavy current.

“Kentucky Dam is running 210,000 CFS and (Lake) Barkley is at 102,500 CFS. Levels are increasing quickly with both lakes at 355.0 and will come up at least a foot over the next 48 hours with no additional rainfall.

“Weather predictions are for rain throughout the system … so this could change even more quickly.”

Darrell Van Vactor is the operations manager Operations at Crappie USA/Cabela’s King Kat Trail in Benton, Kentucky.

Bass: “Bass remain super slow with little pressure on them at all right now,” Darrell said.

Crappie: “They have moved deeper in the mouths of the larger bays (and) hanging really tight to cover in 18-to-24-feet,” Darrell said. “Bite is light with live bait doing better right now fished very slowly in the cover.”

Darrell said the numbers of good fish are scarce, but you can catch enough to keep you interested – if you have a lot of patience.

“Tail water areas are all out of their banks and inaccessible right now,” Darrell said. “With warmer temperatures this week it is a good time to get out the old boat and check out all your equipment to be sure you are ready to go – when the water and weather does give us a better opportunity.”

David Thomas, Twitter – @DavidThomasWNWS
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