High Water Currents In Lakes

[doroger]

With all this high water, can someone explain how and where the current breaks will form when the lake starts to drop due to release? When water is being pulled through the dam, will the majority of the current still be in the river bed, or does it free flow across the lake? How do you determine where the most current will be? I ask because of all the high water, we may be looking at some good fishing in our lakes with all the high water.

[shaker]

Thats a good question I'll try to explain what I have learned on Truman in the last few years and maybe someone with more experience and knowledge will speak up and help out. I treat the high water lake just like a giant river, there are aeas of high current flow that you can see at times mostly around points and flats, this is beside the obvious areas of trash and mud lines floating down the lake. Whereever there is high current flow there will be eddies, these won't be as obvious as in a river but they are there just the same you'll have to look for them. I crappie fish a lot and have noticed even under high generation current flow that a 1/16 jig as it's dropped down will swing out to the current flow. I always look around stick-ups and trees for tell tale signs of current, there will be little curly whirls in the water following the current. One thing that I saw this spring that I don't think I have ever seen before as I was chasing some spawning crappie up in a feeder creek maybe a 1/2 mile from the lake. The fish suddenly turned off, I was looking around and saw those current swirls on the wrong side of the stick-ups, the lake was raising so fast that it was pushing some serious water back into the creeks. There was some heavy rains the night before and the lake came about 18" that day while I was on the water, the catfish might have went crazy but the crappie went south or somewhere. Hope this helps a little and maybe someone else will speak up with their own experiences. Good Luck!