Cave Run Lake Fishing Guides and Conditions, Kentucky

About the Cave Run Lake

Cave Run is the reason anglers in the South can fish for muskellunge without driving to the Great Lakes. The Corps impounded the Licking River in the 1970s inside the Daniel Boone National Forest, and Kentucky Fish and Wildlife built a muskie fishery on it that is now the best known south of the Ohio River. People plan whole seasons around it.

Muskie fishing here is what muskie fishing is anywhere: long days, few bites, and a fish that will follow a lure to the boat and turn away without touching it. The productive water is the standing timber and the flooded creek arms in the upper end, the weed edges where they exist, and the points where the old river channel swings close to cover. Autumn and early winter are the classic months, when the fish feed hard and the recreational traffic has gone home.

The lake is not only a muskie lake. Largemouth fishing around the timber is good and considerably easier, crappie fishing is dependable, and there is a decent white bass population. Most visitors come for one species and leave having caught several others.

Because the lake sits inside the national forest, the shoreline is public almost the whole way round. That is worth more than it sounds: bank anglers and kayakers can reach genuinely good water here without a bass boat, which is not true of most reservoirs in this directory.

The reading below is pool elevation. Cave Run is a flood-control reservoir with a real winter drawdown, and that swing decides whether the flooded timber and brush in the upper arms are in the water or standing in mud. The lake also colours quickly after rain on the Licking, which for muskie is often a help rather than a hindrance.

Access

Scott Creek and Longbow: Corps ramps on the lower lake near the dam.
Zilpo Recreation Area: Forest Service camping and access on the north shore.
Twin Knobs Recreation Area: large campground and ramp on the south side.
Claylick and Warix Run: ramps giving access to the upper timber.
Upper Licking River arm: the flooded timber and the best muskie water.
Minor E. Clark Fish Hatchery: nearby, and worth a stop.
Note: much of the shoreline is national forest, so bank access is genuinely good.

Seasons

Winter: muskie feeding in the cold, few anglers, and the drawdown at its lowest.
Spring: bass and crappie in the timber, and muskie in the shallow arms after the spawn.
Summer: warm and busy on the lower lake, fish early and work the shade in the timber.
Fall: the classic muskie season, cooling water and the best odds of the year.