Kentucky Lake -- Big Sandy River

Good News!!!!

The Big Sandy (north) imagery is now complete and available. The information below was posted just after the surveying activities were initiated in September of 2001.

Click here to jump directly to the Big Sandy River (north) product page.

 

The images below are from both the old paper map and newly re-surveyed waters of the Big Sandy River. The total acreage of the full color image is approximately 290 acres. This represents only about 10% of the area I plan to survey in the next few weeks. I expect to map somewhere around 2000-2500 acres before cold weather makes data collection too unpleasant.

The image below is a portion of TVA chart 113. This is the Big Sandy River Area of Kentucky Lake (in Tennessee). The lightened box indicates the area that has been re-surveyed. To help you get oriented, Mansard Island Dock is in the southwest corner of the image. The power line that crosses the bay is also south and west of the block but slightly north of the red triangle.

 

This is the same block as above but zoomed in. The lightened area here indicates the area of brand new data collection. If you can resist, study this image alone and try to guess where the active river channel was at the time of impoundment. It may surprise you. Don't feel bad if you get is wrong, it surprised me a bit too.

 

It should now be obvious to you where the active channel was at the time of lake creation. As you can see, the Big Sandy river was a very dynamic, meandering stream with many oxbows and tremendous terrain detail. I am amazed at the detail that still exists.Similar areas on KY lake north of here appear to have more siltation than this particular area.

The contour interval of this image is 1 foot. Final imagery will be zoomed in even more with hundreds of spot elevations provided. These spot elevations will allow for easy reference to real-world depths based on lake elevation.

For you crappie fisherman that key on points, outside bends, ledges, and humps, there are many of those things in this relatively small area.

One could fish for several hours and never need to get above an idle on the big motor.

 

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