I understand all the migration stuff and actually have logs that help me remember these things over the years. After talking to a very good local bass hunter this year, he had to travel a significant distance to find the larger bass that had "hung up" in 2 areas South of Warren when they should have (based on the calendar) already made their way to Warren. IF the bait is not moving up due to slowly falling water temps, neither will the predators whether it be muskies, pike or walleye. The reason you may be catching more walleye is because the numbers of bass are not there competing for your offerings. As far as the straw hat fishermen, there has not been an increase in that pressure either this year.....there are actually fewer of them because the big bass (and tons of smaller bass) have not shown up yet. The only difference from this year and all the other years is a 6 degree temperature difference this year as compared to most years dating back to 1997. Water temps below the dam are usually 39-41 during Christmas holiday.....they were 46.7 last weekend with 60 degree temps and rain coming this weekend. 3 weeks ago, we actually gained 1.5 degrees in temperature which has not happened in 11 years or so.

The number of bass hunting boats in the 2 dredges has really dropped off this year too as the word has spread that the bass fishing has just not fired up yet in the "normal" areas.

The number of transient muskies certainly are not here (Warren County) yet this year either and that is a fact, unfortunately.


Good Luck with the trout and bring spare battery with you as you will be fighting some serious current for quite awhile according to the Corps of Engineer guy I spoke with this morning.