BROOKVILLE RESERVOIR
“There’s a lot of big largemouth bass in Brookville, but the smallmouth fishing is even better,” said Tom Carr, the reservoir’s wildlife specialist.

“The lake is long, deep and full of great smallmouth habitat. There aren’t any submerged weeds because of the lake’s drawdowns and flooding. Even during bass tournaments, about 40 percent of the weighed-in fish are smallmouth bass.”

The smallies are taken off rocky cover, which makes up much of the habitat in Brookville; the largemouths will often be taken in the same areas. Dual catches are not uncommon and the bass can be taken on the same baits.

According to Carr, the largemouths can be targeted specifically in the coves where there are still stickups, even though the coves can be 40 feet deep. There are a few flats that attract largemouths as well.

The Garr Hill ramp area has a flat that is about 8 feet deep. This area can be a productive largemouth haunt, though it doesn’t have any vegetation. During drawdowns, the flat will be left high and dry. During full pool, this flat can be a hotspot after the sun goes down and bucketmouths move up to chase shad. In the lower half of the lake, the Templeton and Wolf creek arms will also hold spring largemouths.

Both smallmouth and largemouth bass utilize the outside points that border the coves. Many of these areas have shallow water between these points and serve as feeding flats. The bass will move up from the outside edges of the points in the evening to sample the shad cuisine. Largemouths up to 20 inches and smallmouths up to 18 inches aren’t out of the question.

“Based on what we saw during a 2002 fisheries survey and then again in 2007, I’d say the smallmouth and largemouth fisheries are faring about the same if not a little better than they have been,” biologist Rhett Wisener said.

The smallmouths are more abundant below the Fairfield causeway in the lower half of the lake, while the largemouths tend to dominate the shallower bays and relate to the wood cover in the northern half. There are weedbeds that will hold both species and it just depends on the location and depth of those weeds as to which species an angler is more apt to catch.

Brookville Reservoir is located southwest of Richmond in Franklin and Union counties. Contact District 5 offices for more information at (765) 342-5527, or the Brookville Reservoir’s Wildlife Specialist office at (765) 647-2657.

For travel assistance, contact the Franklin County Convention, Recreation and Visitor’s Bureau at (765) 647-3177.

MISSISSINEWA LAKE
“The fish populations are expanding into the restored water on Mississinewa Lake,” said Ed Braun, a District 4 biologist. “Fishing should be on the upswing for a couple more years.”

In 1999, major repairs to the dam were needed and a drawdown of massive proportions continued until the spring of 2005. No one knew how this would affect the fishing, but a Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) survey in 2006 found plenty of bass, some up to 19 inches long. Growth rates were determined to be above average with bass reaching the minimum-length size of 14 inches in just three years.

Smallmouth bass that were sampled didn’t fare as well. The top length of the 15 smallies that were checked was only 14 inches.

The run-and-gun approach to finding largemouths is the way the most successful anglers approach this fishery, according to Mike Remie, the lake’s wildlife specialist.

“Anglers who consistently catch bass hop from point to point,” Remie said. “They’ll cover 10 to 15 points, pound each one with about 10 casts and then move on. If they don’t find any fish, they’ll start over again. Both largemouth and white bass will herd the shad up along the shoreline where they can corner them and where they’ll hit them from the water, while gulls will attack from the air. You’ll catch a lot of fish, maybe a fish on almost every cast.”