TnRiver46

This is why I don’t check the weather

I started to add some tree branches I was trimming to the water around our dock. Then I remembered how often I get my lures stuck casting off the dock. So I scanned over the area and the down imaging showed a giant tree. Sunken bushes and trees are a great place for bass and crappie but also a good place to loose all your hooks

Absolutely! I’ve dissected a few

Yep. Because you can still catch them like that Not exactly because the bass don’t have new diagnostic machines

Fontana is kind of overrun with little spotted bass but there have to be some good ones in there somewhere. I’ve caught some 2-3 lb smallies

Smith mountain and Norman are both quite popular so you should be able to find tons of information. I think both of them are tough according to tournament results but big fish are a possibility at both. @lo n slo would be the guy to ask about Norman, it’s definitely loaded with spotted bass. I’ve heard about excessive boat traffic on both lakes but It shouldn’t be amped up to maximum levels by April watauga might be in your wheelhouse but it’s craZy windy. It’s dangerously close to NC and VA. Also the holston river should be pretty awesome in April and several stretches, especially in Kingsport

I tie mono leaders to mono sometimes, like when I want to use one of my baitcasters to drop a drop shot straight down . For a large disparity in diameters, I like the triple surgeons knot. For similar diameters I like the blood knot. Can you tell I’m a flyfishing guide?

A little squirrel exclusion from yesterday (another perfect cut) And a squirrel nest selfie from today, fairly elaborate nest where one roof overlaps another

Hahahah. Almost zero people fish anywhere near my house. There’s too many other good places in the area, a lot of people wouldn’t even consider fishing downtown Knoxville. It’s chickamauga or bust for everyone! Been seeing tons of yachts headed to the stadium today though, go big Orange

Yeah I cast there for over a decade. It’s a money spot

Hey man I included NC too haha

I’m only about a month in but I’ve yet to master the SI . I thought this was a fish I caught next to a barge tie up…….. But then I drove back by on my way up river and it was still there, I think it’s something man made whatcha think?

I don’t even have a unit on the front of my boat currently but I’m pretty sure my new console unit is live target capable. Maybe I’ll get it one day if I run into some cash. Then again I probably would spend it elsewhere, fishing ain’t that hard……..

Thanks!! my buddy got it for me for always taking him fishing throughout the years. It’s a daiwa airx 7 foot rod and shimano Sahara 3000 reel

Shew, I think the possibilities are endless! The hangup might be the cabin, there’s a lot of good spots without any cabins directly on the water. Also there aren’t any real “lakes” like you are used to, everything we’ve got is dammed up flowing water or just flowing water. You might be able to stay on a river instead of a “lake.” I don’t know too much about Virginia but in East TN and western NC, the main thing you will notice is no vegetation in the water. There is some here and there on certain bodies of water but most lakes are almost completely void of it. The rivers have a decent amount but not in the spring time. What you’ll find mostly as far as cover is rocks and logs, and lots of them. I fish mostly plastic worms and tubes but most anything will catch bass. The one thing that always seems different to me about waters up north is how flat and shallow they are, so be prepared for some steep drop offs. SW Virginia is the only part I’m familiar with in that state, but the rest of the area you mentioned I’ve got a decent handle on (most of the water in western NC comes right through the Appalachians into TN). The main rivers flowing from VA and NC into TN are the holston, the clinch, the French broad, and the little TN. And to each of these rivers there are countless tributaries. Watauga, tuckaseege, oconoluftee, nolichucky, nantahala, Powell, pigeon, just to name a few. Several of these rivers and their tribs have dams on them, which can be good and/or bad depending on conditions. Sometimes the reservoirs can be super deep and tricky compared to the rivers. Other days the rivers are just raging from dam flows, making fishing difficult. are you after specific species? Lots of bites for the kids? Lakes like watauga and south holston have trophy smallies but are typically windy and in spring time might be snowy. Cherokee and Douglas are good for any fishing but are pretty huge. You could rent a massive home on either of these lakes and live the life of luxury. Norris lake is similar to Cherokee, deep and clear and loaded with smallies. There are even a few smaller lakes on creeks that flow into Norris that have camping and maybe cabins, big ridge state park and cove lake state park. Fort loudoun/tellico is considered maybe not quite as good of fishing, but closer to cities and mostly good cell service. The fort loudoun portion is much shallower and swifter than all the tributary lakes mentioned earlier, and always a little muddier. Fontana is remote, no cell service, bordered mainly by National park and national forest but is one of the prettiest places on earth. 10-12 foot water visibly with a depth of about 400 feet at the dam. The only cabins I can think of there are floating on the water. Dale hollow is similar to Fontana, deep and clear and remote but I’ve never fished it (world record SMB lake). You probably won’t find any cell service here either. For a chance at double digit size fish, chickamauga is where you’d want to try. Watts bar is the lake above chickamauga and has some pretty big bass of the green and brown kind. For trophy spotted bass, try parksville lake and go whitewater rafting on the ocoee one day. I don’t even know If I’m going down the right track, I just started typing stuff about the water around here. Like I said the possibilities are endless, I haven’t even gotten into the rivers and tailwaters ! You’ll need two cars or a shuttle service to float several of them but it’s not too hard to figure out, just pull a Burt Reynolds and pay two locals $40 to drive your truck down to Aintry……….

Always set the hook away from your face……

The cable that goes from the positive on one battery to the negative on the other battery needs to be thick. Like maybe 2 ga. The female plugs you can usually find at wal mart or academy/bass pro/west marine type store

Hahaha! Or crawl under houses infested with rats and skunks! I could create plenty of fishing content, but turning on the computer is where my skill set stops. teachers should make double what they get. I don’t think I would go to school everyday for a million dollars

If you ain’t catching drum, you ain’t doin it right…….

Nice fish! I don’t hunt but I have been the boat captain for many a cast n blast. It seems the key is to be highly visible instead of camo. Maybe you could spray paint your gun silver hahaha. Our waterfowl avoid camo and duck blinds like the plague and fly directly over glitter boats full of neon clothed bass fishermen

I forgot I have a few strange experiences while night fishing. I don’t night fish much so I guess they slipped my mind. One involved a bird, yes that’s right a bird in the middle of the night. I was trying to skip a jig up under a row of docks that had some lights on them. Surely lights would help me see to fish! I was concentrating on where the light met the water, trying to skip it a time or two before it went under the dock and hopefully kept skipping. I guess this tunnel visions compounded by a lack of sunshine caused me to look over a few things, like a giant bird. One of my casts was way too high and didn’t skip at all, just slammed into a dock board. The noise was pretty loud in the dead quiet, and unbeknownst to me a Muscovy duck was sitting on top of that dock. The noise scared the duck, causing it to launch off the dock and fly right through my Jon boat on its way to safety. I thought a helicopter dropped an atom bomb on me. In case you’ve never seen a Muscovy duck, here’s how cute they are the other was just how creepy it can be when something approaches you silently. Fishing in a cove one night, a monstrous chunk of foam just drifted up to me at a snails pace. The lag in time as it approached , not knowing what it was, allowed my imagination to run wild I also saw some pirate ships go through a lock one night but that was explained by the Nina and pinta replicas making their way from city to city along the river for people to tour. We didn’t even want to tell people we saw pirate ships for fear of sounding insane, then I saw them on the morning news………

Where I live they are everywhere. The river is a few hundred yards across and there are smallmouth hiding behind every rock and log at some point. They can’t just leave and travel several miles like Lake Erie . I have never fish that lake but I would imagine they are still biting out deep somewhere between 15 and 25 feet. I would guess the only time of year where they stay pretty shallow in large numbers with consistency is in the spring. I bet there’s a few running shallow eating bait but I imagine the majority are slowly easing to the winter areas while following bait fish schools. Granted I have zero experience up there but I figured somebody should attempt an answer

We always wrap a grocery bag on all the squirrel traps in the winter inside of that tarp you can see on the photo. A cold rain can still get em but normally that adds some insulation. Also sometimes they are going to die in a live trap just from banging around in there like crazy and exhausting themselves. We have provided bedding (just cut a strip off a towel and toss it in there) on nights where it’s predicted to be down below 20