I had a good weekend fishing.  Thought I would share it.  In my recent posts I have mentioned that I have recently moved from South Alabama to Tennessee and not used to fishing in clear water lakes.  I had been fishing up here for about 2 months now with minimal success.  I have talked to locals who have told me that they were doing very well with chartreuse spinner baits and suspending jerk baits, both of which I had been fishing very much.  I thought I had found a perfect place on the lake too.  It is a series of three coves placed between a dam and the mouth of a tributary of the lake, and I have seen literally hundreds of bass swimming in this area (due to the clear water) but hadn't caught many at all (about 15 bass total, over the course of 2 months).  So Saturday, a friend of mine went with me and suggested a change of scenery, and I reluctantly agreed.  We went into another tributary on the other side of the lake, and fished exactly the same way we had been fishing before, but this time he caught 6 fish and I caught 8.  Sunday morning I went back.  I had caught 8 fish by noon.  That afternoon, I was pulling a chartreuse spinner bait through a tree top and hooked on to a 7.5 lb mama.  What a fish!  It was a great day!  I took the fish up to the marina to have it weighed and people were congratulating me all the way up the ramp.  It was a great feeling, and it was nice to see that even though I hadn't been catching a lot of fish before, it was just the wrong place.  I still don't know why I wasn't catching the bass in that first place, but doubt I'll be going back there for a while!  I've been using a lot of the information that is posted on this website about fishing with spinner baits and it has been very helpful.  I found this past weekend, that when I retrieve the bait at a depth where I can just barely see it, I seem to be getting the most bites.  Also, when I find a tree top, I try to pull my bait so that it bumps as many limbs on the tree (without getting stuck) as possible.  I've found that most of the bigger fish I have caught (including Big Mama) struck the bait almost immediately after coming off the limb.  I'm no expert and I know most of you guys already know this stuff.  I just wanted to share a good experience and maybe help someone else out too.

Great story. I guess the moral of the story is that if you are not catching fish where you're at--move! Move either to a different part of the lake or river--or to a different one entirely. Congratulations on the hawg.