Chickamauga Dam 10-23

[DHaun]

My good friend Jeff and I got on the water about 11:00am and started out trolling crankbaits. It was an incredible day to be on the water and the water temp was right at 70, light wind and sunshine. No generators were running until 1:00pm so the river was way down and was calm. We caught about 6 smallmouth and a couple largemouth trolling (all small) and then I went to find a deep hole per Polo Dog's recommendation. I knew of a good one and when I got to it there was a lot of bait and cover being marked so we anchored and I started spoon jigging. Jeff had some medium size shiners so we used them some too.

We caught Bass, Crappie, Striper, and Bream out of this hole that goes from 7-->35 ft all in about 15 square yards. Needless to say with tons of cover collected on the bottom that I lost about 4 spoons and 5 hooks. At 1:15pm we went up below the Dam to see what was happening with the generators turned on. I spoon jigged at the wingwall and threw a plug and there were no takers. We then did about 3 loops around the rockpile trolling a redfin and matzuo fantastic minnow for stripers. Still nothing...so we decided to go back to trolling for smallmouth in the current just below the Dam.

We caught 5 or 6 more and called it a day at 3:00pm - the wind had picked up quite a bit by then and we had done just about what we came to do but we never really got a nice smallmouth like Jerdog and I did yesterday. Although we didn't catch anything of any size we did catch about 20 Bass (17 were smallmouth), 1 crappie, 4 bream, and a striper.

All fish safely released - Some pics are below:

 

[polo-dog]

Those smallies sure are beautiful fish and I'll bet that they pulled hard too. I'm glad that I sent you to some fish, sorry about the hardware though. I really need to get out there and fish for those smallies.

 

[JerDog]

Nice report and a good day on the water...Good to see you got your digital camera back! How big was the striper?

 

[DHaun]

The striper was small...just a bit bigger than the crappie. The striper, crappie, bream, most of the bass out of the deep water hole were all on the spoon jig.

 

[sbrannon]

What were you trolling with?

 

[DHaun]

Various crankbaits that dive 8-10 feet. Luhr Jensen Hot Lips Express Shad, Bandit 200 Splatter Back, Generic Orange/Yellow Crawdad, Blue/Chrome Rebel, Matzuo WartHog Crawdad. They all seem to work about the same if they are bumping bottom and running true. The reason so many different ones is that I lose on average a couple to hang-ups each trip so I rotate a bit as I lose lures to try to make sure I have one of something left for next time. Probably time to get a good reliable lure knocker/retriever.