TnRiver46

Had to bite the bullet and get some $20 rods at wal mart and some supplies for swamp fishing next week. Got it all for under $90. Like @N Florida Mike said, the place was picked clean! I need to find some heavy sinkers before Sunday , although I might be able to get them down in the swamp

I wish we could keep small ones, 14” minimum for largemouth and 18” for smallmouth . There are a few smaller rivers with a slot on smallmouth because they are loaded with little fish, but all lakes are 14”/18”

Black and blue jig with flappy trailer or chatterbait

^haha! Yes throw a frog!!! Also A chatterbait will come through it fairly well, and a swim jig very well. Weightless flukes and stickworms for finicky fish

It also depends on how hungry you are! My grandpa wouldn’t be able to wrap his mind around people buying a $100 fishing pole, catching a fish, and then letting it swim away. If I’m hungry and have a limit of keepers, I’m excited to eat. I would hope that nobody in their right mind would get between an excited hungry man and his food

If I’m stuck on the bank fishing big water smallies, I post up on a point

I don’t think pike or pickerel exist in TN, but maybe pickerel in a Mississippi River backwater in west Tennessee? I’ve also never heard of the ghost river but if there’s bass in a river, your lure choices should work very well

+1 on what @RoLo said, they don’t all spawn simultaneously. If some are spawning, just as many if not more are NOT spawning

Funny you would say that, there’s a launch that I use that always has a massive pile of filleted fish on it. We put in there one day and my buddy says “hey wait a second” and starts walking into the water toward the pile of fish carcasses. I said whoa man, it’s always there, don’t walk in that mess. Next thing I know he’s holding a up a filleted flounder with a stick! I pondered forever on how that might have gotten there. Years later, I’m standing in the same spot looking into another fresh fish pile and there’s a bank fishermen there that says “nasty, ain’t it? That guy that runs the seafood market dumps his fish carcasses here.” Mystery solved

The sunset hour near a pond is the mosquito witching hour!

Wal mart does NOT have a better selection of fish. Blasphemy! Haha! And definitely not captured on the same day you buy it

They taste great but it is frowned upon by most bass anglers to eat them. Bass resource is the only forum I’ve ever been on where people can actually admit they eat bass without getting attacked haha

What the world is that white thing and what crankbait caught the PB? The tail dancer?

South Holston and watauga can also be very good at times

Bass love cut bait and catfish love jigging spoons. Just another way for fish to disprove myths

Cool deal, I will be getting married very close to that lake in September 2021

Thanks, we sat there and ate some sandwiches. Cades cove in the great smoky mountains national park. You can see the new spring leaves crawling up the mountain

Just trying to catch one is usually a tough enough game for me

Wow haha glad you made it out alive

Beer and a shot? I shall require blanket and pillow as well

Spots can certainly live in fast water but so can largemouth. I catch spots on all the same tackle as LM and SM, in the rivers I fish there are portions you can go year after year and catch almost all spotted bass. It seems when they get a population going in a small area, they become firmly entrenched. In creeks like you described, I love fishing a 1/16 oz Texas rig 4 inch zoom lizard

@Swbass15, congrats!

It compares just slightly above it! Haha. I had a wiseacre tiny bomb from Memphis today, mmmm

saw 9 black bears in the national park Thursday night, here’s one