Flood Waters and Bluegill

Southern Illinois and Kentucky are flooded - badly.  The huge amounts of rain the past several weeks have forced Kentucky Lake to rise to record levels.  I believe it topped out at 373.5 ft. on Thursday.  They're slowly releasing water, but the Tennessee River, the Ohio River and the Cumberland River are all overflowing their banks and it's a huge mess. 

As we crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky, this scene didn't look too bad, until we realized that this is NOT part of the river, but is farmland that is badly flooded.... Yes, you read that right - that is flooded farmland!

We drove down to one of the marinas and we were shocked to see the high water levels there.  That's the roof of a band pavillion sticking up out of the water.... I'm guessing the water is at least 10 ft. deep right there.

This is the view from our back deck....

And that's our dock on the right....

We breezed thru the house and made sure that the sump pumps were properly working and then went back out on the deck. I mean, you just cannot help but stare at that water!

Louie, "Hmmm, I bet if we could get to the back of our bay, we could find some bluegill."

Me, "Do ya think?"

Louie, "Yep."  Now, mind you we had not been there 10 minutes total yet and the bluegill were calling to us.  Bluegill are my ABSOLUTE favorite fish to catch.  Some people call them Bream.

We hurried over to the shed and dragged out my sons little 8 ft. boat.  We tied it to the back of our golf cart and dragged it down to the water.  When we tried to start the trolling motor we discovered that the battery went dead over the winter.  So my McGyver husband just took the battery out of the golf cart, hooked it up to the trolling motor and off we went....

Louie caught one first....

A nice little bluegill - not huge, but a promising start...

Then I hooked into a Redear.... Also known as a Shell Cracker.  I prefer Redear, because of their red ears!

Not that anyone is paying attention, but did you notice who got the bigger fish????

While we were out there, we saw tons of turtles enjoying the beautiful, sunny day...

And a crane stalking his dinner....

This was an amazing thing to see.  There is usually a dock here and we can walk under it at winter pool, which is when the water is low.  So the pier is about 6 ft. high, and then this light is on a pole about 10 ft. higher than the pier.  This is what you can see now....

Once we had about 40 bluegill we headed back to shore.  We usually clean our fish at the table on our dock, but since the flood, our electric out to the dock isn't working.  Louie needs electric because he cleans our fish with an electric knife.   So in true fisherman fashion, we did the next best thing...

We dragged a table outside, ran an extension cord out the front door, grabbed 2 of our hunting chairs and proceeded to clean our fish in the front yard.  Works for me!

But the thing that really cracked me up is a sight I will never forget and that is the 2 bass fishermen who came thru and were fishing on our LAWN.  They trolled right up over our sea wall and fished in our grass.  I am so glad I was able to get a picture of it!

Now that is something you don't see everyday!  Tomorrow we are driving to the dam to see how bad it looks and how much water is spilling out.  See you later!