Anyone that's local please fill me in..... I've gotten the chance to fish a tourny there once and pleasure fish a long weekend there last summer during the offshore bite. Both times I launched at Dayton. For shallow I fished several backwater sloughs around the mouth of the Hiwassee River, Sale Creek, and Possum Creek. Offshore I fished several ledges around Sequoyah and in Chester Frost. I have a couple of new places I want to look up when I head back there during the first week of May for a shallow/Bed bite. Can anyone fill me in on an area north up river between Dayton and Watts Bar called "The Branch?" More specifically, the locals refer to it as "Back Slough" and "Bus Slough"? Anyone care to show me where that is and give me an idea of what the lay of the land is like there?? 

Hmmmm. Not sure I’ve heard that term but I can check around. Upstream of the hiwassee mouth it’s pretty much a wide river with a bunch of massive “sloughs”. Some of them you can barely get your boat through where they meet the river, then they open up into a huge pond looking thing and are usually choked out with cheese, but the cheese won’t be topped out in may. If the flood gates happen to be open at watts bar dam, just fish up that way and hang on. In the last two years the number of spotted bass people catch seems to have exploded 

 

disclaimer: I’m not good at fishing chickamauga, it’s about 2 hours from me 

I should have included this in the OP but its a spot that Andy Morgan used to win a tournament during that same time of year a few years back.. 

31 minutes ago, RHuff said:

I should have included this in the OP but its a spot that Andy Morgan used to win a tournament during that same time of year a few years back.. 

No clue, I checked all the named sloughs on navionics and my iPhone maps, nothing by any of those names. He probably made them up since he knew it would be published hahaha. But there are lots of sloughs that had no name

Surely someone out there can tell us

I’ve been hearing about some catalytic converters getting jacked at the ramps, beware. 
 

i even searched the Chattanooga forum for ya, got nothing. Those words are so general they confuse a search function, you might be hunting a menderchuck. I would just fish a bunch of sloughs and hope for the best 

I gotcha......I appreciate it..... You familiar with anything north of Dayton? All of my fishing has been south of Richland Creek. I've been eyeing at Poe Branch and Dry Branch and Spence Slough.. 

33 minutes ago, RHuff said:

I gotcha......I appreciate it..... You familiar with anything north of Dayton? All of my fishing has been south of Richland Creek. I've been eyeing at Poe Branch and Dry Branch and Spence Slough.. 

yes I’ve fished upstream of Dayton all but two times when I’ve been on chickamauga. There’s some cypress and stuff around the Armstrong ferry area. Cotton port marina is a good place to launch. Fishing up at watts bar dam is my favorite but all the mouths of the sloughs and the grass edges between Dayton and watts bar are also really good. There’s not a whole lot of “offshore” type stuff as the river is narrow but there is still a channel edge all the way. 

Awesome... I appreciate the info man... Love this forum best community in bass fishing

I have not heard of those sloughs, although multiple names for the same place seem rampant down there. The sloughs are awesome sometimes you pull into one and it's like our in a different world.

 

I have fished the Big Sewee, it's really a large creek

Laydowns, weeds and a few docks

Flippers paradise and in some places you can flip both sides, it gets real narrow

 

I have also fished the Washington/Town creek area and it's skinny going in but in one of the arms it opens up pretty good. Lots of weeds and multiple arms to fish.

 

All my fishing has been early spring or late fall so not in the your same time frame.

Also most of the success I have seen there has been in Chester Frost, Harrison Bay Sale and Wolftever creek areas