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Create 1,000 shoreline laydowns to improve bass spawning habitat.
Kentucky Lake is well known for its bass populations and each year it draws more than 100,000 bass fishing trips in the Kentucky-owned portion alone. It is no secret that the bass numbers are down in Kentucky Lake. The goal of this project will be to improve the recruitment of largemouth bass by creating spawning cover on over 5 miles of suitable shoreline. Kentucky Lake is a huge lake and state agencies are small, so affecting the fish population is going to require a lot of money and volunteer time.
Kentucky Lake was impounded in 1944. As the reservoir has aged it has lost most of its original flooded terrestrial cover. In a natural lake, this cover would be consistently replaced by natural tree laydowns. However, as a flood control reservoir it is subject to an annual fall and winter drawdown of 5 feet. As a result of the drawdown and decades of bank erosion, most of the shoreline is devoid of natural woody cover and vegetation. This is particularly true during the fall and winter when the few natural laydowns that exist are often dewatered and inaccessible to our fish.

Following several documented weak bass spawns from 2010-2015, the goal of this project is to provide more bass with optimal spawning habitat and juvenile habitat to potentially improve upcoming bass spawns, and therefore, improve catch rates of bass by anglers. Researchers have shown that largemouth bass prefer to spawn on gravel substrate near simple cover such as trees that have fallen off the bank. Furthermore, largemouth bass are not community spawners and typically create beds at least 30 feet from one another. The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) recently began experimenting with shallow water bass spawning habitat in nearby Lake Barkley. KDFWR’s recently conducted snorkel surveys revealed that the new spawning habitat was being using by bass and other species like bluegill, redear, and longear sunfish. There are abundant areas of Kentucky Lake which seem to have the appropriate gravel and slope, but are missing the simple cover. Getting this grant would start to fix that problem on over 5 miles of shoreline.

Spawning flats designated for growth of bass, bream, bluegill and redear.

KDFWR and Kentucky B.A.S.S. Nation will work to provide educational information about this project and bass spawning in general through available social media platforms. This information will be meant to increase the knowledge on why we choose to implement simulated laydowns and what they mean for anglers. Active fisheries management like this is not often attempted in reservoirs this large, but with enough people involved, anything is possible.