Georgia Welch with a good one yesterday. She is from Elcho, Wisconsin.
The lake level is 554.02 and dropping very slowly with minimum flow and sluice gates open just a trickle. The White River at Newport is 5.43 feet and rising with the increase discharge from the dam. The surface water tmeperature is 49-degrees but you can expect that to drop quickly with the cold weather coming. We are to get snow on Sunday. The water remains a little stained and you can see your lure down about 4-feet. In general the fish stay in the warmest water in the winter so the main lake is the best place to fish. The shallower water in the creeks cools more quickly. Trollers are catching several stripers in the 5-7 pound range and smaller White Bass and Hybrids. Crappie and Bass are fair in the evenings until and just after dark. It seems the larger crappie are together and the smaller ones are also together. I will catch four or five big ones on one brush pile and then the same with ones barely 10-inches on another. Bass may show up anytime. Some are inside brush piles on windblown banks just around the main lake points to the inside at sunset. Park your boat in deep water and cast a grub to the shore and let it sink slowly out to deeper water as far as you can cast. I am not a troller but just drag live bait or an umbrella slowly through schools of shad until one bites. Otherwise drop a spoon on their heads. When ice forms on the line and gets into the reel and fouls up your drag I quit fishing. I will be out there to check things out anyway. I do not like to run a boat in zero weather. Steering cables freeze, shift cables freeze, water pumps freeze and lower units freeze and it is not good on anything especially me. I have all of the winter gear but by the time I get it all on I am worn out. I like 50 and the wind is not my friend and we are going to get that soon. If this is global warming I do not want any part of it.
