Tom Kelly with some pretty good ones for his trophy pond yesterday caught on Blackburns new brush piles. 
The lake level is 554.29 and is the same as this time yesterday with generation about 1/2 the time. It rises when the quit and drops slowly when they generate. The ground is saturated and water is still running in the lake from the hillsides. We have had a little less than 2-inches above normal precipitation including rain, snow and sleet so far this year. The last sleet storm has been very slow to melt despite very warm temperatures in the 70's but is about gone now. The White River at Newport is 22-ft. and they are doing all they can to let as much water out and keeping downstream from flooding. We will see what happens when we get into the power pool at 553.75. The lake wants to clear but when they generate heavily for long periods of time the main lake channel stains greenish but it does not hurt anything. I had a 50-degree water temperature in Blackburns Creek yesterday afternoon and 48 on the main lake. The shallow creeks are warmer than the main lake and some of the shad are going to it followed by the stripers and black bass. Some crappie are doing the same thing but some are just staying on the brush but shallower. Fishing overall is just fair but if you happen to find a school of shad back in the creek with bass and small stripers feeding on them it can be good for a short time. Please release those small stripers. Nobody is impressed by killing them and bragging about it. We want them to grow and have striper fishing like it used to be. Anybody holding up more than one is saving them and a striper with it's mouth open is more than likely dead. We are working hard to get more cabins ready for opening up. The warm weather is causing the phone to ring steadily and people are anxious to get outside and go fishing, especially from up north. We are getting a lot of feedback thanking us for not raising prices and keeping ours very low here at Blackburns. Others were aleady high and going higher. I might not make a profit but will try and make it up in volume. I learned that in Econ 141. The weather is beautiful and should stay that way for a few more days and get much cooler next week. That is the way March works around here. The cold fronts just keep coming on through and then high pressure and clear cold nights. The wind went down about 4:30PM and I got to a stopping point with my daily plumbing and went out for a while until dark and worked a bass bank with a grub and caught three bass after trying a good brush pile and catching five decent crappie but no big ones. When I pulled up I could see the crappie on top of the brush about 5-feet down. I caught one and spooked the rest but they just moved over to the next pile and I cast past it and let the jig drop into it and caught four more. That is my limit. The sunshine felt good but so did the coat after the sun went down. Do not expect to catch a ton of fish everyday. It changes quickly and the people catching them are working very hard for sometimes days to catch a few but some good ones are being caught. It is just nice to be out. Catch a few, release a few and keep a few. Big stringers of dead fish are not impressive anymore.
