Watts Bar Tailwaters Action

Arnold Cagley and I went below Watts Bar Dam today to fish the tailwaters.  We caught a few of the usual  tailwater type fish; small cats, drum, smallmouth, and largemouth.  The most interesting find of the trip was an american eel (Anguilla rostrata) I found in the boxes up in the dam. I looked up american eels on the internet and they are pretty fascinating creatures. Here is what The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website has to say:

American eels begin their lives as eggs hatching in the Sargasso Sea, a 2-million-square-mile warm-water lens in the North Atlantic between the West Indies and the Azores. After hatching, the buoyant eel eggs float to the ocean surface and hatch into small, transparent larvae shaped like willow leaves. These larvae drift with the Gulf Stream and other currents, taking about a year to reach the Atlantic coast. By this time, the larval eels have developed fins and the shape of adult eels. In this first phase, the juveniles – called glass eels – are without pigment and still transparent. In the second phase, juvenile eels develop gray to greenish-brown pigmentation and are called elvers. Juveniles slowly develop into yellow eels, the sexually immature adults that are actually yellow-greenish to olive-brown.

Tellico Smallmouth Fishin'

Joe Whedbee and I went smallmouth fishing at the canal between Tellico and Ft. Loudon lakes. We first launched at the new launch below Tellico Dam, and I drove up directly below the dam to get bait. It has recently cooled off a considerable amount and the humidity is much lower than normal. There was very little bait fish activity visible on the water surface. I threw the net several times below Tellico dam and finally got a few (20 or so) little alewives. They were absolutely perfect size - about 3 to 4". I couldn't get any more so we loaded up and re-launched at the canal launch. We went to the usual point and the first cast for both of us produced extremely scrappy smallmouths. Within the first 5 minutes or so, Joe had boated a 2 lber and a 4 lber. When he had his 4 lber on I also had a 2 lber on for a double! It was awesome. We stayed on the point, catching or losing a fish on every single minnow, until we ran out of bait. I then went to a slew on the right side as you go up the river into Ft. Loudoun to get more bait. I got a nice mess of 3" gizzard shad and we headed back to the point. We fished another hour or so catching a total of about 30 smallmouth. It was a fantastic evening.

On the way home I took Highway 95 and as I drove by White Oak Lake I noticed ducks on the pond so I stopped and got my binoculars out. I counted 78 male and female wood ducks - absolutely beautiful!

Back in Business

Arnold Cagley and I fished the point at the canal between Ft. Loudoun and Tellico - We got bait pretty easily and caught 25 smallmouth - the best one was 2.5 lbs.  It is amazing how things turn back on after the weather stabilizes a little bit. I did really well in this spot on 8/21 and 8/25, a cold front arrived on the night of 8/25, and I tanked it on 8/26.  The weather settles down and here on 8/31 we cash in on them again.

Cold Fronts Change Everything

Scott Pastor a.k.a Fishy and I smallmouth fished at the point at the canal between Tellico and Ft. Loudoun today after work for a few hours.  The weather has changed very drastically recently.  It probably has rained in a month and yesterday a major cold front moved in and it rained a couple of inches.  So, fishing conditions are very different compared to hey days of 8/22 and 8/25.  Fish and I worked for nearly two hours just trying to get bait.  The minnows were essentially completely gone from the cove I had previously been getting them.  We got ~20 minnows and fished the point on the canal between Loudoun and Tellico and caught about 5 smallmouths, none of which were anything to brag about. Lesson learned:  Things can change fast, so if you're on the fish you better take the day off work and stay on 'em!

Smallmouth Fishin’ the Canal

Mike's 4 lb. Brozeback

Mike Walker and I fished with shad minnows at the point at the canal between Tellico and Ft. Loudoun. We got shad minnows in the first cove on the left heading upstream on Loudoun from the dam. We caught 26 smallmouth. It was amazing – we caught a couple of 3 pounders, a couple of 2 & ½ pounders and a couple of 2 pounders. Mike caught a 4 lber on the opposite point (on the launch parking lot side).

Flathead Fishin’

I fished Ft. Loudoun Lake today at the Little River; I got plenty of good sized gizzard shad and fished in the Little River and all the way up the Tennessee to Sequoyah Hills – 0 fish – I basically fished all day and got completely blanked. So…I loaded up and relaunched blow Ft. Loudoun Dam to catfish the Tennessee. I fished until about 2:30 a.m. and caught one flathead that weighed 25 lbs, it measured 39". Great picture huh?

Tellico Smallmouth

I fished the point at the canal between Tellico and Ft. Loudoun today for a couple of hours. I caught 14 smallmouth, the best of which was 21" long and weighed about 3 lbs.

New 1966 G3 Gator Jon

Karoline, Luke and I went today and picked up my new 1996 G3 at Madisonville Marine in Madisonville, TN. It is rigged with a 90 HP Yamaha 4-atroke motor and an 82 lb thrust MotorGuide Great White saltwater trolling motor and a Lowrance GPS-sonar unit. We took it out on Tellico Lake for its inaugural voyage. We launched at the canal between Ft. Loudoun and Tellico. We rode around for about 1 hour allowing the motor to break in. It is a nice spacious boat, just about perfect for all the different kinds of fishing I like to do.

St. Simons Island

Max with his Bonnethead

I took a long weekend and went to visit my good buddy Fishy (a.k.a. Scott Pastor) at his house on beautiful St. Simons Island, GA. He had been inviting me down forever and we could just never get together on our schedules so we finally made it happen – of course it had nothing to do with a great redfish & flounder report that he had recently relayed to me. Fishy has a very warm and beautiful family and this was the first time that I had spent any time with them. I drove down to Atlanta on Thursday evening after work in the 2004 F250 with the new Native Kayak strapped to the top and hooked up with Scott to stay in his home away from home. Fishy works in Oak Ridge a lot and so he uses their house in Atlanta as a midway stopping point to break up the travel to and from St. Simons. We enjoyed a nice local pizza pie with one of Fishy's long time friends, Jimmy Wayne Buckshot, and retired early so we could get a jump start on the remaining leg of the trip to St. Simons. We rolled in early the next day to beautiful St. Simons anxious to get out in the salt marsh. After meeting the family and getting settled in it was down to business, Fishy had received a nice new 100' seine net for his birthday that he was dying to try out so we headed for the beach. We rolled out the seine and made a broad sweeping pass out off the beach through the surf in hopes of limiting out on stone and blue crabs only to get a 5' black tip shark in the net. Once we started pulling the net into the shallows the shark went bananas and ripped a huge hole in the seine. Needless to say this ended the seining activities and Fishy was pissed.
One of things I learned while I was at St. Simons was the backwater tidal creek fishing is completely dictated by the tide. Therefore, we let the tide chart tell us when we would be fishing today – turns out we needed to enter the creek at about 3:00 p.m. at high tide. This allowed us a little bit of time to get bait. As with all live bait fishing, getting just the right bait can be an adventure of its own. The boys (Max & Grady) had the bait routine down to an art. They knew the process and were glad to show a newby like me the ropes. We set out minnow traps baited with pieces of hot dog at low tide in the headwaters of the creek we would later fish. This required stomping through the classic nutrient rich charcoal grey stinky salt marsh mud that is so distinctly and uniquely found at the coast. After setting the traps we headed back to the house to rig up our rods and to load kayaks – Max and Fishy would be fishing out of their own individual one man boats while Grady and I would be working out of my new Native. After just an hour or so we were ready and headed back to the tidal creek headwaters to collect the 3 or 4 dozen mud minnows (Umbra lima) that our traps had secured for us. Mud minnows are one of the baits of choice and as I learned quite appetizing if you get hungry along the float trip. Did I mention Fishy is crazy and will eat just about anything? We put our Kayaks in at high tide and began the ~2 mile trip to the ocean, riding the current of the outgoing tide. We fished a Carolina rigged live bait set up and allowed it to bounce along the bottom as we drifted, casting and hitting points and pockets in the sawgrass as we gently progressed along the creek. The creek was 4 to 8' deep in most places and not much more than 20 to 30' wide. We occasionally came to a place where there were some riffles with a deeper pool forming. I picked up a small rat red and a couple of speckled trout along the way. As we floated we could sneak up on the marsh birds and get a really good look at them. We saw a bunch of rails and marsh wrens. About a mile and a half into our float trip we came upon some docks and deeper water and then something big sucked down Grady's mud minnow. It was on…his rod doubled, his drag sang, and his eyes got about as big as golf balls, and all I was worried about was keeping the kayak backed away from the dock and that fish off of the barnacle covered pylons. I'll have to hand it the little man, Grady (now known as Spot Tail) did a terrific job of fighting the "fish of the trip" an 8 lb redfish. He was thrilled to say the least. Fishy caught a few specks and then caught a couple of nice keeper flounder once we got out into the actual ocean where the creek dumps out. Overall, we caught 7 or 8 fish – it was a lot of fun.
The next day we went out in the ocean in Fishy's Carolina Skiff. We attempted to locate some more flounder and redfish, but weren't able to catch any. We saw some redfish tailing in the shallows, but could never invoke a bite. We did catch a few sharks – Max caught the big one of the day, a 3' bonnet head shark.

Boca Grande Tarpon Fishin’

Luke and I went to Ft. Meyers, Florida for a Perfect Game Showcase Baseball Camp during the first week of June, and since we were in this neck of the woods we hired a guide to take us tarpon fishing for two days.  We fished with Capt. ____ for two ½ day trips.  We fished out of his 18' Ranger Flats Boat - it was an awesome boat. We sight fished for tarpon with live blue crabs. We positioned the boat ~200 yards off the coast of Gasparilla Island and would look for the big silver flash or a 100+ lb tarpon coming to the surface – it was AMAZING! We had schools of 100 to 150 lb tarpon all around us all day but they woul not bite. At one point when a school of monsters was cruising within 10' of the boat, one free jumped and it was so close to the boat that it's splash got me wet!  On the second day Luke finally got one on and it ran out about 100 yards creaming drag, jumped 3 times and about 10 yards from the boat broke his line! #@%$** It was incredible. He did a great job of fighting it and learned how to "bow to the king" but it just wasn't meant to be.

Emory River Crappie

Arkansas Crappie

I fished the chartreuse tube grub tipped with a tuffy minnow in brush today in the Emory River for crappie.  The weather was clear and sunny with the air temp in the 70s.  The surface water temperature was in the mid to high 60s. I caught 13 crappie (5 keepers) the best was 13.5" and all of the throwbacks were right at 9 1/2+".  I caught them all off one tree on the main river channel of the Emory ~2 2/3 mile up from the junction of the Emory & Clinch rivers on the left bank off an island.  All the crappie were in about 12' of water.  I also caught 10 small bass (largemouth and spots).

Emory River Crappie

I went again today and crappie fished the Emory river by myself today.  I caught 2 keeper crappie and a few small bass.  The bass are very active chasing minnows.

Emory River Crappie

Luke and I went crappie fishing up the Emory river today.The weather was clear and sunny to partly cloudy, with the temperature in the 60's.  We fished secondary feeder creeks with chartreuse tube jigs tipped with tuffy minnows.  We caught 4 keepers and 1 throwback.  Luke also caught a nice channel catfish that I kept to eat.  Luke had a nice catfish on and was fighting it but it got off.  We fished brush that was in 6 - 10' of water.  We had a great time together.  Thank you Lord for Luke!