bryand82487

Caught some nice fish below the dam yesterday.

Got out on the river yesterday morning below the dam for some smallmouth action. The day started off fast with our only 3 smallmouth in the first 15 minutes. My buddy and I doubled up with the second cast and I caught this monster and he caught his first smallmouth ever. I almost had mine boated when he hooked into his. Another 5 minutes later my other buddy landed a big one as well. All three of these fish were caught within 15 yards of each other. We fished until mid afternoon but only landed some white bass, catfish, buffalo, and one green fish after that. I was for sure the day was going to be fish after fish but they shutdown right after we caught those. Either way I could have gone home after the first three fish and been satisfied.

I use the Loomis Smallmouth GLX rod and love it. The action might be a little light for some people's likings but it's handled plenty of big fish for me.

Great fish Paul! I hope to get out on the TN River Friday. Are you fishing jigs?

That's a great day of fishing for this time of year. Thanks for the update! Good information to know.

I'm hoping to take off Friday and get down there with a buddy of mine. The weather looks great towards the end of this week and weekend. If I make it I'll let you guys know how I do. Was anybody out last weekend or yesterday?

Which Bama rig did you get?

Thanks! Got what I needed.

Does anyone know a website with the 20% off sales that have the Loomis Trout and Panfish ultra light rods? I can't find them on any site with sales. Thanks

Also if you have a droid or iphone tva has an app for the water release schedules that's pretty handy. My link

I fished on the river in Clifton on Friday and Saturday. On Friday I caught a couple that morning then a friend came up and we probably caught 10 in the 1 to 2 pound range on rage craws. We couldn't find any decent fish though. Saturday was the same way. Eventually we got into some crappie on the baby rage craws, then switched to grubs and did a little crappie fishing. We managed 6 keepers but caught prob 20 crappie and a couple of stripes.

Well by this morning it had already gone back down. It looks like they've been raising it about 5 ft through ought the day and dropping it back down all night. Fishing was tough today, I fished from 7:30 till 1 with only 4 small LM. The wind kicked up out of the north at about 12 or 13 mph making it tough to fish. When it's out of the north it's blowing at an angle up river so it's hard to drift down because it's blowing up and towards the bank. I think I'm going to fish the river near Cliftoin tomorrow since I didn't have much luck today.

I should be fishing below the dam all day tomorrow and maybe Friday too. The rivers up 5 or 6 feet and the current is looking good, just hope the cold front doesn't shut them down. I'll let everyone know how it goes.

Doesn't sound like too bad of a day. I was hoping to go tomorrow but I don't think I want to put up with the wind.

I"ve got one and it's fun to shoot but definitely wouldn't be my first choice for a carry gun. I would go with something like a Kahr CM9 to carry.

Let us know! I'd love to keep a page going on Pickwick reports if anyone's interested.

Fishing for smallies can be tough. I learned a lot from Roadwarrior and have gradually progressed on my own as well. If your drifting minnows you will eventually get your share of smallmouth. From my experience and I know someone will disagree with this, but if I'm not fishing rip rap, under water boulders, gravel, anything with rock, etc. I'm wasting my time for brown bass. That goes for live bait or artificial lures. All the mud banks banks and trees farther down from the dam I've never had any luck. I've never caught a smallmouth on the river over a about 1 1/2 miles below the dam. I'm sure they are there, and with that being said I've definitely not fished those areas as hard either. A good current, eddies, current breaks, and where shad build up in these pockets are key. Smallmouth fishing with artifical lures can be really tough, and if you don't have all the right factors in play or if they are there and you don't use them to your advantage you can easily consistently not catch smallmouth. Another factor that makes your chances of catching a smallmouth more difficult is that there simply isn't near as many smallmouth as there are largemouth below the dam. If you click the link below and scroll down to Pickwick it's a survey of the fish shocked up. Notice the smallmouth population is increasing every year but notice for every smallmouth shocked up there's about 4 largemouth. I'm not sure about below the dam but my guess would be that the ratio of smallmouth to largemouth would be even less since you rarely catch smallmouth on down the river but again this is just a guess. Don't get discouraged though it will come together. I've had days (fishing artificial s) where I've caught them consistently every couple of casts, but I've had more days where my main bag is largemouth with a couple of smallmouth in the mix. The river is really low right now and a lot of the big rock structures that are great for smallmouth habitat are above water right now. Don't get me wrong though there is still plenty of smallie structure under water too right now. Use that to your advantage and take pictures or mental notes of your surroundings because when the water goes back up you will know the layout and that big rock pile you were staring at on the shore this week could be a rock pile that's 10 ft under water your bouncing your crankbait off of a month from now. Try to base your trips if possible off the hourly discharge of Pickwick Dam on the TVA website. The more generators going and higher hourly discharge usually produces a better day of fishing because the current is better. I know a lot of guys just have to go when they can but if you can go on Saturday or Sunday look at it and see which day looks better. After each trip I record the weather, water temp, Hourly discharge, number of generators, how my fishing was, how far under or above water my favorite spots are, and the water level below the dam. I've fished there enough now that I can look at the water level on my computer and know which spots I can fish, which spots are going to be above or below the water, or to deep or shallow to fish. Now I'm no expert fisherman by any means and even with all these factors I take into consideration, I still don't always have good days but it definitely helps. You have to be willing to put time in down there though for sure. Yes, you can go every now in then and catch a lot of fish but if you want to consistently catch brown fish down there you need to learn as much as you possible can and try to go 3 or 4 times a month atleast. The conditions and patterns change so frequently down there, mainly the water levels, what worked last week doesn't always work the next. I hope this helps and again this is my experience below the dam. I'm sure people will disagree and if so would love to here what you all have to say. I'm always up for learning more. http://www.tva.com/environment/water/catchtables.htm

Here's the 2 smallies I got from Sunday. Looking at the picture again I think the bigger one is probably 2-2.5 lbs instead of close to 3 like I previously said.

I went from around 1 till dark today below the dam. I caught 2 catfish and 1 decent smallmouth that weighed close to 3 lbs drifting minnows. When it got closer to dark I caught about 5 largemouth on a top water popper and my first smallmouth on top water. They were all around 2 lbs but were still fun to catch.

I use a Loomis CBR 947 and love it. Might also check out the Deep Flex series.

My worst day was breaking my TM shaft trying to retrieve a bait.

The small shad were schooling Wednesday. I'm not sure if it was caused by the weather change or so much current is going through the river right now they had nowhere else to go?

I hope you guys do well. I took off Wednesday at lunch and headed back up and only managed to catch 3. I think the water may have gotten to high to quick? I also noticed the small shad have already started to school up in the mouths of coves and breaks in current. The river has dropped back down to 368 and the current is now manageable so the bite might be looking up again. Definitely want to get together next month. Let me know how you do.

Went out and fished the river below Pickwick dam yesterday. My friend and I fished from 6-930 AM and boated about 10 bass. A couple went around 3lbs and caught 2 nice smallies as well. The bite was still on when we left but we couldn't bare the weather any longer. It was pouring down rain with winds gusting up to 30 and I didn't feel safe any longer in my boat. It felt like I was in deadliest catch lol. We were fishing crankbaits and jerkbaits through the current breaks. They were dumping a lot of water into the river which made the fishing good. The next 2 days the average outflow will be right under 200,000. The most I've ever seen has been around 140,000 and the fishing was amazing. If anyone's thinking about fishing up there this week I think you'll have a great day. Also the water temp has dropped into the low 80's.

What's the name of that river? I might have to make a trip up there one of these days.