Wake Forest Res - 10/18/2007 (Kayak)

[Jeffonc]

Had to work late into last night, and I liked the looks of this morning's weather so I took a shot at Wake Forest Reservoir this morning. I haven't been there since the spring, which was before I had the depth finder on the boat, so I was interested to see what's under the surface out there.

The obvious thing is that half the lake is missing. Its a much more shocking sight on a small body of water than something like Falls. The end of the concrete ramp is at least 20 feet out of the water. There's a good hardpack path from the ramp down toward the water intake where people have been launching from. Very muddy & soft at the edge, but OK for the kayak. Would be tough on a trailer. There are no weed beds left in the lake and the water is dingy. I was surprised that there wasn't more plant matter growing in the exposed mudbanks on the sides. Its pretty barren and no cover to speak of. I only went about halfway up the (normal) lake before it got to be 3 feet deep. Probably a quarter mile of the upper end is just a wet creekbed now.


I did some trolling around with shad raps watching the finder. Plenty of 8 foot+ water on the lower half of the reservoir, with a very small and pronounced channel down to 18 feet. The bowl around the bubblers is about 15 feet deep. Did not mark many fish.

I wound up catching 5 fish, all on crankbaits. 4 bass, 1 perch. Some very small, some just small, though one was the biggest Wake Forest Res bass I've caught to date, probably all of 1.25 lbs. I did get a double, which is always welcome. One casting in front of the boat and one trolling behind. They seemed to want some color (firetiger Shad Rap, chartreuse shad Lucky Craft) in the dinge. Most of them came above the first set of points, where the shelf is 6-8 feet and the channel down to 10-11. The bigger one (lip-able) came in the cove by the spillway.



Probably the best sight of the morning was on the ride home where my windshield got wet enough to run the wipers. Even had some flow from the downspout for several minutes while I was unloading. No complaints here!