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!

Summertime Smallies

Van Shubin, Mike Walker and I took to the water this afternoon to try to located some Watts Bar smallmouth.  We got a good bait tank full of shad minnows and fish ed the rock bluffs just up from Long Island.  We caught several nice smallmouth in the 2 to 3 lb class.

Wintertime Panfish

Luke and I went down below Watts Bar Dam to fish for shellcrackers and bluegill today.  We fished the discharge from the Nuke Plant's cooling towers with a pop-eye fly tipped with wax worms. We caught a bunch of fish today - keeping only males that were above 8" to 9". TWRA has a trophy fish recognition program called the Tennessee Angler Recognition Program (TARP).  This program establishes a size for each game species at which a fish caught of that size or larger is recognized as a trophy for that species.  An 11" shellcracker (Redear Sunfish - Lepomis microlophus) and a 10" Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus) qualify as TARP fish.  Luke caught two shellcrackers that were 11" long - see picture above.  These are really nice panfish! 

Bruiser Blue

Crystal, Karoline (5 years old), and I went catfishing on Watts Bar this evening. We took off from the dock, and I got good bait (6 -8" gizzard shad) in the cove that cuts back into the Southwest Point Golf Course just before the Hwy. 58 bridge.  We anchored up at one of my favorite big cat spots on the Tennessee River - just off the rock point at Bell cove where the main river channel drops to 70'+.  I was armed with my Ambassadeur 7000 spooled up with 50 lb test Big Game Trilene on the 8' St. Croix Cat Rod.  The bait was presented on a Carolina rig - 6 ounce egg sinker and a 12/0 Gamakatsu circle hook. Just before dark ~9:00 p.m. I had a monster bite and there was no doubt I just entered a battle with one of the biggest fish I had ever had a chance to land.  After just a few minutes of tug of war, the ole boy surfaced.  Crystal and Karoline were beside themselves, and when he finally showed up Karoline was wide eyed and stood back as if she didn't know what to do.  She was excited but at the same time a bit scared, I guess she didn't know there were any fish in the lake that big.  I weighed him on my 50 lb max Rapala digital scale and the scale maxed out.  I measured him at about 47", so I estimated he weighed right at 50 lbs.  After a few pictures I sent the trophy back on his way to the deeps of the Tennessee.  Thanks for the thrill Lord!