Alright guys it has been a LONG time since I posted a fishing report. I don't get to go that much any more and I even see that the format for posting has changed since I last posted one.
This report covers a whole week but the simple pattern never changed from day to day and has been this way for the last month or so and will probably continue til the fall.
This covers the upper end of Watts Bar, in the river area of it. Launching from Pole Cat and fishing the main river channel towards Kingston.
Using live bait; throwing the cast net and trying to catch the 3-5 inch gizzard shad. They are somewhat hard to come by; you can catch tons of the 1-2 inch shad but those don't work good and they die quick. The bigger gizzards are what you want. We are drift fishing those along the channel ledges with 1.5 to 2 oz sinkers. The shad are running a tad bigger than they usually do and the heavier weight is required to keep the baitfish from swimming off.
Water temps have been in the upper 80s. And you wont hardly catch a fish unless they are pulling 2+ generators from Ft. Loudon dam. If the water ain't moving...go home.
They've not been turning the water on until around 12 noon and it usually takes a good 2 hrs before you start to see the effects of it down where we are fishing.
The bigger stripers have started to hide from us. We are catching good numbers of the 6-10 pounders with the occasional 15-20 pounder. Ran into a guide from N/C who has been fishing the Clinch and he says they've been catching about 40-60 a day up in that area.
On a side note, some willow fly hatches have started and thus there has been little flurries of topwater action. Have been catching a few LM and SM on the shad if you free line them down the banks. The biggest so far has just been a 17" smallie but we're mostly concentrating on the stripers right now. Of course with this style of fishing you are going to run into some cats but even those have slowed down since its been 100+ degrees.
LAKE TRAFFIC means a lot too. Forget fishing on Friday or the weekend; doesn't matter if they are pulling lots of water and you get good bait. You're wasting your time. Stripers do not like lake traffic and there's just too much of it on the weekends. Go through the week if you can. For example...Tue-Thurs we averaged 20 fish a day. We went Fri evening; they were pulling water good but there were lots of folks out riding and making waves....we caught 1 striper and that's the only hit we had all evening.
This report covers a whole week but the simple pattern never changed from day to day and has been this way for the last month or so and will probably continue til the fall.
This covers the upper end of Watts Bar, in the river area of it. Launching from Pole Cat and fishing the main river channel towards Kingston.
Using live bait; throwing the cast net and trying to catch the 3-5 inch gizzard shad. They are somewhat hard to come by; you can catch tons of the 1-2 inch shad but those don't work good and they die quick. The bigger gizzards are what you want. We are drift fishing those along the channel ledges with 1.5 to 2 oz sinkers. The shad are running a tad bigger than they usually do and the heavier weight is required to keep the baitfish from swimming off.
Water temps have been in the upper 80s. And you wont hardly catch a fish unless they are pulling 2+ generators from Ft. Loudon dam. If the water ain't moving...go home.
They've not been turning the water on until around 12 noon and it usually takes a good 2 hrs before you start to see the effects of it down where we are fishing.
The bigger stripers have started to hide from us. We are catching good numbers of the 6-10 pounders with the occasional 15-20 pounder. Ran into a guide from N/C who has been fishing the Clinch and he says they've been catching about 40-60 a day up in that area.
On a side note, some willow fly hatches have started and thus there has been little flurries of topwater action. Have been catching a few LM and SM on the shad if you free line them down the banks. The biggest so far has just been a 17" smallie but we're mostly concentrating on the stripers right now. Of course with this style of fishing you are going to run into some cats but even those have slowed down since its been 100+ degrees.
LAKE TRAFFIC means a lot too. Forget fishing on Friday or the weekend; doesn't matter if they are pulling lots of water and you get good bait. You're wasting your time. Stripers do not like lake traffic and there's just too much of it on the weekends. Go through the week if you can. For example...Tue-Thurs we averaged 20 fish a day. We went Fri evening; they were pulling water good but there were lots of folks out riding and making waves....we caught 1 striper and that's the only hit we had all evening.
