At any given time, fishing on a lake can be on or off. But it is really not even that simple. At any given time, individually targeted species may be on or off. If the bass are off, the crappie bite may be on, or if the crappie bite is not cooperating, the striped bass may be going crazy. Sometimes everything seems to be on…and at other times nothing is biting. That’s just the way it goes. The key is to either time your fishing outings according to when your targeted species are biting, or find the hot species and go after what is biting at any given time.

Every year I try to fish Kentucky Lake in Marshall County Kentucky at least once for their slab-sized crappie or bountiful big bass. It is one of the best crappie and bass lakes in the country, and also home to numerous other excellent key species. With 160,000 acres of water and 2300 miles of shoreline, Kentucky Lake is a huge body of water, but is very easy to navigate. And with its countless bays and inlets, can often be fished like a small lake.

I usually try to head down to the Moors Resort on Kentucky Lake (www.moorsresort.com) either in fall or early spring. One of the nice things about fishing Kentucky during those timeframes is that I miss a lot of the crowds and I also get to extend my fishing season. Kentucky Lake’s fishing season never closes, and while many Midwest anglers are cooped up and can only dream of taps at the end of their line, Kentucky Lake offers some terrific fishing. When it’s just before ice time in the Midwest or even when the ice is covering the northern lakes, Kentucky Lake is a great place to keep the open-water fishing skills honed.

Although at times it can get quite chilly (the average temperature in the winter is 38 degrees), the change in climate from the north is always a nice welcome to Kentucky’s moderate temps. It never quite feels as cold as the temperature gauge proclaims. Maybe it’s part of the warm southern hospitality of the Moors Resort and staff. Or it can be that my blood gets a little thicker living up north. On past trips when it was in the fifties up north, it could be in the sixties or even lower seventies down south.

This past fall I met up with Don Schnuck of Big Kahunas Guide Service (www.bigkahunafishingguideservice.com), a friend of mine that fishes out of the Moors. Don said that we were going to stray from the norm of crappie and bass, to capitalize on a window of opportunity for White Bass that was going extremely well. When someone that knows the water says a good bite is happening, I’m all in for the catching as opposed to the fishing side of the sport. So off we went to the main body of the lake to try some White Bass fishing.

Little did I know that while straying from the typical species that I fish down there, that I’d also get a lesson in a new fishing presentation. Don had brought out all the stops and reached into his past and dug up what he developed and created with another local guide called the “Kentucky Lake Christmas Tree”.

The Christmas Tree was a trolling style presentation with a deep diving crank bait minus the treble hooks that was tied at the end of the line. Up from the crank, three to four jigs with twister-tails were tied off in one-foot increments. The crank bait allowed the presentation to dive to the depths where the white bass were holding, which was just off a main reef in the main body of the lake.

The top of the reef started in about fifteen feet of water and then dropped off to over fifty feet deep in just about one hundred yards or so. The bass were hanging just as the reef dropped off. So we dropped our lines while well on top of the reef, and trolled perpendicular to the drop-off. As soon as our baits hit the drop, the tugs would be there. One of the coolest parts of fishing the rig was the ability to catch more than one white bass per troll. Usually you would hook-up on three, and at times all four, of the jigs of the “Christmas tree rig”. While trolling you would feel a bump, then a second or two later another bump, and then another. You could virtually count the fish on the line without even seeing them.

Then the fun part began of trying to reel in a small school of white bass while fighting on the end of the medium action Abu Garcia baitcasting rod and reel. What a fight. The average white bass is about 12-inches long and puts up a good fight. When you get three and four on the end of your line, it’s like pulling in a five or six-pound bass. About 100 yards or so, we would reel up the lines and then motor back to the reef’s shallow flat, only to drop the lines and begin another troll.

The limit for white bass is twenty-five per person and after several trolls we were quickly nearing each of our limits. Don suggested we try a different presentation and go with an inline spinner to round out the catch. We switched to spinning gear and motored to the drop where the Lowrance unit lit up with fish marks and a giant pod of baitfish. We made easy casts off the ledge of the drop and let the bait reach the bottom. With a slow raise of the rod tip along with a slow retrieve of the spinning reel, we would wait for the feel of the bite, sometimes coming on the drop and other times hitting on the upswing. From the time we left the Moors dock to catching our limit was just over a two-hour time period. The window of opportunity was there and we seized it. We then packed up and headed back to the Moors for lunch at the resort’s restaurant, Ralph’s Harborview Grill.

The Moors (www.moorsresort.com) is a fabulous place to stay while down on Kentucky Lake offering a full-service resort with lakeside cottages, a log cabin lodge, complete marina and store, boat rentals, restaurant, playground, pool, mini-golf and activities for the kids, and definitely caters to the fishing crowd. I would suggest looking them up and checking out Big Kahuna Guide service for your next extended fishing season.