Originally Posted by
Hoosier Hog Daddy
The lake didn't get fished out of bluegill / redear. As happens at most all of our reservoirs , the shad populations eventually explode and bluegill/ redear size goes down. When the size drops, people stop fishing for them. This happened in 1995 at Patoka. It will never come back, unless the lake is drained, all shad killed , and we start over.... or unless there is enough predator fish feeding on shad to get their numbers down which is unlikely. Small lakes like Boggs Creek (Lagootee) and Starve Hollow (Vallonia) are a couple examples I can think of where the DNR drained the lake down and killed the fish and started over to remedy the above situation. Some of the smaller state lakes around are likely to have less shad and better candidates for finding nice bluegill. Summit lake is an example of a lake that seems to be one of those lakes that perpetually produces nice bluegill and has somehow avoided the overpopulation of shad.