Fall 2003 Issue

Harold Haddix slowly worked the inside bank of tiny Pan Bowl Lake, catching bass after bass by casting the weedbeds with a triple hook, 6-inch plastic worm.

"At tournaments, when I pull out a pre-rigged worm, people look at you like ‘he doesn’t know much about fishing,’ but they don’t laugh when I come to the weigh-in," said Haddix, whose personal best bass from the lake is a 7-pounder. "I use this rig at other lakes close by and I can’t get a strike on it. But, here at Pan Bowl, it kills them."

While Yatesville, Dewey and Buckhorn lakes have the reputations of being big bass lakes, 98-acre Pan Bowl Lake has larger bass than those other three lakes.

"The largemouth bass fishery is pretty phenomenal," said fishery biologist Kevin Frey. "On Pan Bowl Lake, every year we get one at least 23 inches. Usually, our biggest bass come from Pan Bowl."

Pan Bowl Lake has heavy stands of water willow, coontail, some duckweed and pondweed along with buck brush. The long, narrow lake, located on the outskirts of Jackson in Breathitt County, is perfect for small boats.

Haddix prefers to cast across weedy flats with a red splotched, purple K and E worm, a 6-inch pre-rigged worm with a hook in the head, one in the middle and a stinger hook at the tail. Haddix ties a barrel swivel on his line about a foot above the worm to eliminate line twist then presses a small split shot on the line above the swivel.

Pan Bowl’s thick brush and weedbeds also harbor a tremendous population of bluegill and redear sunfish.

"The bluegill and redear sunfish numbers may be the highest in the state," Frey explained. "There are just super numbers of these fish in Pan Bowl."

Cast a Pop-eye jig tipped with a wax worm into the weedy flats for both redear and bluegill. Redear like small yellow twister-tailed grubs as well.

Lake Beshear

Lake Beshear, a 760-acre lake in Caldwell and Christian counties, has an excellent population of good-sized largemouth bass.

"If we electrofish for an hour on Kentucky Lake, we average 15 fish per hour over 15 inches long," said Paul Rister, western fisheries district biologist for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife. "When we electrofish Lake Beshear, we average 30 fish per hour over 15 inches long."

"Lake Beshear reminds me more of an eastern Kentucky lake," Frey said. "It doesn’t have the shallow habitat like most of the lakes in this region. It has a lot of bluffs and rocky shorelines."

Target these rocky shorelines with lures that imitate shad, such as a white spinnerbait or a chrome lipless crankbait. Largemouth bass also feed on bluegills, Rister said, so plastic worms or lizards in junebug, sour grape or smoke with blue flake are good imitations. Water willow and lotus stands are excellent areas to throw these lures.

The prime months to fish Lake Beshear for largemouth bass are April and May and again in September and October.

The channel catfish in the lake also are improving dramatically. "We used to see nothing but 8- to 12-inch catfish, now we are seeing many over 20 inches," Rister said.

Rocky banks are good areas to prospect for catfish in the spring with chicken livers, night crawlers, catalpa worms or dead minnows. As summer arrives, catfish relocate along deep flats along the old creek channel during the day. They move up on shallow mud flats at night to feed.

Copyright 2003 Kentucky Afield Magazine.  All rights reserved.