The warm-water discharges nuclear plants and steam plants serve up fast fishing action for many kinds of gamefish throughout the winter.
Hotholes around the discharges of power plants, whether nuclear or stream-driven, are true winter hotspots for fishing, with the fish for the taking ranging from speckled trout to stripers to bass to bluefish.
Baitfish schools typically are incredibly thick, and everything that eats shad or herring shows up for the feast. Fish may feed aggressively, but not haphazardly. With so much food available, hothole fish actually can become quite selective. Anglers often must experiment with various styles of lures.
If fish of any kind are running baitfish or breaking on the surface, most anglers will begin fishing with a topwater lure simply because catching fish from the top is so much fun. Depending on the sizes of the splashes and the kinds of fish an angler hopes to catch, that plug might be a Heddon Tiny Torpedo, an Excalibur Spit’n Image or a Cotton Cordell Pencil Popper.
Sometimes bass or other gamefish will pop baitfish on the top, but they won’t take a topwater lure. The same fish often will hit a baitfish-imitating offering that can be swam among them just beneath the surface. Great picks include a YUM Samurai Shad, Cotton Cordell Gay Blade and a Super Spot.
Another option under the same conditions is to dead-stick a weightless YUM Dinger or Houdini Shad where a fish has just broken or to twitch and pause a weightless Houdini Shad so that it darts back and forth just beneath the surface.
At times hothole fish get extremely fussy, forcing anglers to turn to slow finesse-fishing tactics with very natural offerings. Great approaches for finding fussier fish near the bottom include drop shotting Wooly Curltails and Carolina rigging Notta Worms.
If the outflow creates current, an outstanding way to attracts strikes from many kinds of fish is to rig a YUM Shakin’ Worm with just a split shot and a small hook on the line, cast upcurrent and let the offering drift and fall.
Beyond the obvious virtue of warmer waters, areas around discharges usually offer an abundance of riprap and other rocky structure, plus current, which tends to position fish and causes them to feed more aggressively. Wise anglers carefully consider these factors.
It’s also important to note that many hotholes extend far beyond the immediate discharge. Large areas are often affected, albeit to a lesser effect, and all the anglers tend to pile up right where the warm water pours out (or as close as regulations allow). Fish farther out still will be more aggressive than those in other parts of a river, lake or bay, and sometimes they are actually easier to catch than those tighter to the discharge because they get less fishing pressure.
Finally, it’s critical to remember that baitfish are the key to everything. Anglers should try to get a good look at natural forage fish and “match the hatch” as closely as possible with sizes and colors of lures, whether those lures are topwater plugs or YUM soft-plastic offerings.