Located about halfway between Lexington and Louisville, Guist Creek Lake offers excellent fishing opportunities for largemouth bass and catfish.
The wishbone-shaped lake is in Shelby County, about five miles east of Shelbyville. The lake is visible from U.S. 60, but access to facilities on the north side of the lake is via Ky. 1779 (Benson Road).
Guist Creek Lake has 317 surface acres, 27.4 miles of shoreline, an average depth of 15 feet, and a maximum depth of 47 feet. The lake was formed by impounding Guist Creek, a tributary to the Salt River. The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources built the lake in 1961.
To be just minutes away from busy shopping areas and downtown traffic, some stretches of the shoreline are remarkably secluded and anglers get glimpses of deer, wild turkey and other wildlife while fishing.
The banks are quite diverse, as the lake is surrounded by woodlands, fertile farm fields and residential developments. Cover types include private boat docks, downed timber, weed beds, shelf rock, and gently-sloping gravel points. There are extensive shallow flats in the upper lake.
Lake Access
There are two areas on the lake for boat access.
* There’s a paved boat launching ramp for trailered boats at Guist Creek Marina and Campground, on Boat Dock Road (Ky 1667), off Benson Road (Ky. 1779). The fee to launch is $5. Gas, live bait, tackle, ice, snacks and fishing licenses are available.
Facilities include a campground, open March 1 through Nov. 30. Primitive sites for tent camping is $19 a night and pull through RV sites are $22 a night (includes water and electric hookups). For information call Guist Creek Marina and Campground at (502) 647-5359. Visit their website at http://guistcreek.com/.
* There’s a carry down area, with a gravel parking lot, off Benson Road Pike (Ky. 1779) at the bridge over the lake. No fee is charged to put a fishing kayak or canoe in the lake. Trailered boats may not be launched at this site.
Fishing
Guist Creek Lake has a well-deserved reputation for excellent bass fishing, especially in the spring and fall, when bass come up shallow on the flats. Largemouth bass over five pounds are not uncommon and the lake record is well over 10 pounds. Catch-and-release fishing is a contributing factor to the large number of quality bass in Guist Creek Lake.
According to the 2015 Fishing Forecast, published by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, “the largemouth bass fishery is rated good to excellent, with very good numbers of fish over the 12-inch size limit, There’s excellent potential for quality bass, and bass over 20 inches (trophy fish).”
In the spring when the water is colored up and bass come up shallow, anglers pitch jigs around boat docks or cast spinnerbaits to shoreline cover in the upper lake. Two productive summer strategies for fishing the flats near channel breaks are deep-diving crankbaits and Carolina-rigged plastic baits. Fly fishermen cast popping bugs around weeds beds in the late summer and fall, early and late in the day.
Guist Creek has lots of catfish, rated excellent in the 2015 Fishing Forecast, with both channel catfish and flathead catfish. Drifting live bait — nightcrawlers and minnows — is a good way to catch quality-size catfish. There’s a 12-inch minimum size limit on channel catfish.
Guist Creek Lake also supports bluegill, white crappie, and hybrid striped bass, which were first stocked in 1992. New to the lake is the saugeye, a cross between a sauger and a walleye, first stocked in 2013. There’s a six-fish daily creel and 15-inch minimum size limit on saugeye.
Drifting spinner rigs baited with nightcrawlers across deep flats near channels is a good presentation for saugeye and is likely to attract the attention of catfish, too.
Art Lander Jr. is outdoors editor for KyForward. He is a native Kentuckian, a graduate of Western Kentucky University and a life-long hunter, angler, gardener and nature enthusiast. He has worked as a newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and author and is a former staff writer for Kentucky Afield Magazine, editor of the annual Kentucky Hunting & Trapping Guide and Kentucky Spring Hunting Guide, and co-writer of the Kentucky Afield Outdoors newspaper column.