The lake level is 554.60 and has dropped about 1-inch in the last 24 hours with generation occuring about 1/2 the time. They continue to run the chain of lakes hard, drop the White river at Newport and slow the discharge there. It is 22-feet now and heading for 21-feet and much lower in the next three weeks or so. We are getting about what we will get for the next several months and much less soon. The rules and regulations need to be reviewed and changed. Regulating Newport to 12-feet until the end of november is ridiculous and just leads to hold and hope and then open the gates. The lake surface temperature was 55 when I went out yesterday and 51 when I came in after sunset. It needs to be a solid over 55 before the male bass move to the creeks and we need some nightime lows to be in the high 50's for that to happen. The creeks are very stained and you can see your lure down about 4-5 feet on the main lake. I did find some fish yesterday on brush back in the creek in 28-feet of water. They were small hybrids. white bass and bass and I caught them on the spoon. No picture fish. It was hard to get out of the swirling wind until it dropped about sunset. I am just not seeing the number of shad as normal even after a winter of no shad kill. The big stripers are still scarce and I suspect their numbers are down. It would be good to drop the limit to two fish. People are killing too many fish in the 6-10 lb. range. They are semi-put and take and need time to grow. I suspect more are dying in the heat of the summer than are realized. We received some light rain last night and this morning but not much. Brush piles are not holding as many fish as normal and the fishing is just fair and the lake in general is in excellent condition for fishing, launching and parking.
