Lake Turn Over

[DHG]

we are down here on vacation for the week.

I noticed fishing was tough the past 2 days.

so i got out my underwater fish camera out. I dropped the camera down

1st foot is clear, then it gets cloudy till about 1-2 foot of the bottom

Kinda like when you pour HOT water into a clear glass.

(this was before the rain, saturday)

Are we in the middle of lake turn over ?, that would explain the poor fishing.

couple questions, how long does it take for the lake to turn over ?

where are the last places for the lake to turn over ?

Thanks

Don

[mudbug]

I do not think that table rock turns over. I think the thermal cline goes away, but the lake doesn’t turn over.

I fish what I will call mid lake. From cow creek to a little pass point 9(Baxter on the White and Ants creek on the James) the fish that I am finding are still in a summer time pattern. A summer time pattern for me is mid depth. Structure(points, drop offs, bluff ends. ect.) now what I call mid depth is 25ft. To 45ft. Deep. any thing less that 25ft is shallow and deeper that 50ft is deep. A fall time pattern that some people look for is the fish moving up shallow. We might not have that happen this year. Or it may be so brief a period that we miss it.

[Sam]

The thermocline, water clarity, layers and so forth are things I don't know much about but I'd like to.

We were in the Joe Bald area a couple of days ago, mostly looking for white bass, and I saw things on my 'scope I don't understand. The surface water temp was 69-70 so I wouldn't think the lake would be anywhere near turning over. As I understand it, water is the most dense and heavy at 39 degrees F., and water warmer or cooler than that is lighter and comes to the top. Such a change would be the lake "turning over", and it shouldn't happen at this temperature.

The other day there was a layer at 40 feet. That seems deep for a thermocline, but everywhere we went there wasn't much above that on the scope and constant scattered fish showed right at 40 feet. Was that the thermocline?

If it was, why were most of the fish below it? I thought there was little oxygen below a thermocline, but in the deep channels we scoped what I thought were big bunches of bait and white bass from 47 feet down to 120+ feet deep. That doesn't make sense to me.

Also, we struck out on big perch by the chunk rock banks though we've caught lots of those in the fall of past years. I've got an 8" mark on the handle of a light rod and if a black perch (green sunfish) is 8" or more, into the live well it goes. This same week last year we had a trip where we brought 55 big perch home, but this time we couldn't catch a one. I think it's because the water was so clear, I could see every gravel on the bottom in 10' of water near the banks and I could see my jig in the water.

These are things I'd like to know more about. Maybe someone here can share some information and I can learn something. Thanks.