Keystone Lake - 8/28/2010

August 28th was a gorgeous day here in our little part of the world. The temperature was finally out of the 90's and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The 3 Amigos (Robbin, Rose, and Deana) went "yard-sale-ing", so I loaded up my kayak and headed for Keystone Lake. The last time I was there I only had time to tour half of the lake. I took advantage of a perfect day to complete my journey. The first thing I noticed was that the water level was down about 4 feet lower than the last time I was there. The power plant that owns the lake draws water to use in their electrical generation process (boilers, cooling towers, etc.). We haven't had much rain around here lately so the lake hasn't been able to be replenished.

The lower water level reveled an island that wasn't there on my last trip. This island seemed to be a fishing hot-spot as it was ringed by boats and a lot of people fishing from it's shores.

I was also able to paddle into this area on my previous trip. What was then a small cove is now a pond. The reflection of the sky and trees on it's surface was awesome.
Once again I wish I had brought a fishing pole with me. I can't tell you the number of game fish I saw. You'd have to see it yourselves to believe it. I plotted some points with my gps unit so I can find them again when I do decide to come back to fish.

The shallower areas had a lot of weed beds like these.

Smaller fish schooled in the denser areas. As the water got deeper the fish got bigger. What was really neat was when I'd stop paddling and just drift, the fish would move closer to the surface and follow my kayak. It was like they were curious.
During this journey I saw schools of crappie bass, trophy sized small mouth and large mouth bass. I even saw a HUGE musky swim under my kayak. That was a first for me. I've seen a lot of pike but never a musky ( that spot got plotted, by the way).