Keystone power dam

I fished there yesterday an got 6 nice smallys on plastics , My buddy got double that on line minnys .

bassdawg

I fished there yesterday an got 6 nice smallys on plastics , My buddy got double that on line minnys .

Nice- any decent sized ones bassdawg?

The smallmouths were around 14 inches  but I already got some 18 inch .

SNag I fished it two weeks ago for the first time I caught a similar sized musky while trolling for walleye. I was by myself though and only got half in the net couldn't reach any further to get it all the way in. Anyhow a lot of fun...gorgeous lake...i'd say i'll be back up there again as well.

Ya from what ive heard the lake has gone downhill as far as other species of fish are concered. Saw a decent amount of bass being caught for the tourney tho. We marked a lot of fish in the 80' hole out from the pump house...not sure what they could have been...tried dropping some smaller stuff down to them but couldnt get em to bite. Amazing how deep that lake is for the size.

I hear about nothing but muskie coming out of there. If there are muskies, there has to bee a good forage base, which is usually panfish. They have to be eating something. If the muskies are keeping the numbers of smaller panfish down, you should be able to find some big ones. Of course, over-harvesting by Amish seems to be a problem there. Even when I fished there years ago, I witnessed 5 inch fish being kept. Senseless.
 
The best day of crappie fishing that I've ever had was in Keystone. Just by dumb luck we found a school of fish in that deep hole, suspended about 28 feet down. I dropped a jig tipped with a minnow and WHAM! I hauled up a 15" crappie. I don't think we kept one under 13" and my biggest one was 15.75" while my buddy caught one over 16". I wish it were still like that.

The Amish were out in full force yesterday evening after the storms, at least 10 buggies in the lot.
Fished with the wife for the first time this year, and she caught a walleye!  I was jealous. I got 3 mediocre bass. Last 20 minutes or so we spent gillin' and crushed em'.
 
Only a few other power boats were out most were musky fishin' to no avail

slabdaddy

Any size on those gills?

few nice ones mixed in majority were on the smaller side.

jug

Keystone Power Dam? Is this the lake at Keystone State Park?

No...Keystone Lake is near Elderton Atwood Pa 10 HP MAX ....Keystone State Park is around Derry Pa Electric only I believe...two different lake, but nice carp in both.

Fish KPD again this weekend...Pulled an all nighter and started fishing the lake at about 4am sunday. Casted the sunken island for a bit with no luck. Fished one of the small coves and the action picked up. Had 3 decent follows from musky. Fish reeaalllyyy started getting active around 5-530 am crushing bait on the surface. Lasted about an hour then it died. Tried jigging the deep water by the pump house with no lucky. My buddy did manage to land an average sized crappie and I pulled out a few bass. All in all it was a fun day and we were off the water by 11am. After being up for 26 hours we were exhausted!
 

Is there any decent shore fishing or wading to be had there?
 

slabdaddy
Man, I wish it was the same now as it was when I was a kid. We slammed 13-15" crappies in there every time we fished.
 
john - I share your lament.  years ago I would catch hundreds of night crawlers and would easily go thru 100 a day catching walleye on the sunken island - mainly 14 inchers but would always would get a few legals for dinner.  same with crappie in that bay near the boat launch directly opposite to the main boat launch off 210 and we ALWAYS expected numerous 15inch plus bass including one day when my buddy and I got 16 over 15in including a 19 inch smallie and lots of smaller bass.  no longer.
 
i'm glad that Snag 826 considers "an average size crappie and a few bass" in 7 hours of fishing as an enjoyable day - he wouldn't know what to do back in the 80's and 90's.
 
also, I wonder if the change to "big bass lake" that occurred many years ago impacted the walleye and crappie there??  seem like stocking fry walleye is just feeding the bass.
 
phish  

Phish, ya know the little bay to the left of the boat launch? If you go around that, and then around the point (you could walk it from shore, but it was steep as heck) there was a little beach area right there. Ok. Beach is too generous. There was about a 3ft wide level place to stand. Anyway, the FC threw in a whole crap-ton of stumps there. The water dropped off really fast there. One day too many people showed up to fish from the boat so we had to take turns. I stayed on shore and let my buddies go out in the boat. Out of those stumps I pulled 3 smallmouth over 19" and about 20 crappie over 12", not to mention smaller crappie, lm bass, and sm bass. When they came to pick me up, I had more fish on my stringer than all of them combined (only kept the crappie). We ended up anchoring about 30ft off shore there and catching a pile of fish. Those stumps were AWESOME!
 

Snag_826

"i'm glad that Snag 826 considers "an average size crappie and a few bass" in 7 hours of fishing as an enjoyable day - he wouldn't know what to do back in the 80's and 90's. "

You know I actually genuinly consider any day spent fishing (rather than sitting at home wasting my life, smoking pot and playing video games like most guys my age) an enjoyable day...reguardless of wether fish are caught.Not to mention that we werent targeting bass or crappie that day and were specifically after musky. Sorry you have a problem with that slabdaddy or phish (whoever posted that). I really thought posting some reports and pics on a beautiful lake would be appreciated rather than ridiculed for what the lake "used to be"...theres nothing any one of us can do to get the 70s and 80s back soo why not make do with what we got and see what happens? Im done posting on this thread cuz its just a waste of time and my efforts go unnoticed. What happened to this message board?

 
 
Snag I actually enjoy your posts, I would post on this thread more but I have limited access to a computer until fall. I totally  agree that any day out is better then ANY day at home. It's fun to reminise about the past but to constantly compare it to what the fishing is now a days is senseless. There is no control over the amish that "take to much, take anything ect.." So unless you're going to do something constructive about it why complain about them.  To Phish's credit his post are mainly productive and informative but he didn't need to attack your post. Slab is also a good poster, and helpful.
 
IMO I happen to really enjoy Keystone for what it is now, (minus all the horse **** in the lot LOL) It's a fun challenging lake that's new to ME, and with out knowing "what the lake used to be" I'm quite content trying to figure it out and attempt to get some eyes out of it, and I DON'T consider it a waste of time, bc honestly I've done quite well each time I visited the lake, which is a total of 3 lol.
I chase walleye, I mark a TON of crappie in that lake but I don't fish for them, I'm sure you can go up there and still do very well on them. I do decent on eyes so far there, it's no pyme but with all the other fish mixed in it's a good time out.

slabdaddy
"Phish, ya know the little bay to the left of the boat launch? If you go around that, and then around the point (you could walk it from shore, but it was steep as heck) there was a little beach area right there. Ok. Beach is too generous. There was about a 3ft wide level place to stand. Anyway, the FC threw in a whole crap-ton of stumps there."
 
john - I know where you're talking about but I didn't know there were a pile of stumps there.  a little further towards the dam, there were always deadfall trees going from shore to deep water.  there would always produce well - crappie and bass - not to mention quite a few snags.
 
there used to be some underwater cribs in the bay across from the 210 boat launch (the opposite boat launch) that was pretty good for crappie.  used to always be a few boats around them.
 
phish