I've fished the Nick for for over 40 years and the last two have ben the hardest to catch fish in those forty. I'm 65 and I started fishing with my Dad so long ago, I can't say when. We stopped fishing together about 3 years ago when I just couldn't get him in the boat anymore, he was 90 and at 6ft 4in and 235lb, I just couldn't get him in the boat, his running gear was just worn out. After he decided he couldn't fish anymore, I sold his 79 Challenger with a 70 horse Johnson, with a jillion hours on it for him. The motor had never had anything mechanical done except I cleaned the carbs on it in 06. I bought a 2012 Tracker with a 40 horse 4 stroke and was determined to wear that thing out. I bought it in June of 13, it was a year old and had been in the water 4 times. So I fished the Nick pretty hard and did pretty well through the frog bite and into the winter. Didn't catch big numbers, but I caught more 4 and 5 lb. fish in the winter months. And I would think, "just wait until spring." Well, when spring came, it fell off. Places I'd fished for years didn't hold fish. I saw huge bait balls and could catch nothing ,on top, through it with cranks or under with plastics or jigs. The fish were there but just wouldn't cooperate. Last spring I had been catching some large crappie on the south end of Marion Co. Park along the submerged grass line on the edge of the milfoil, in 10 ft. of water. Not big numbers, but bigger fish. I got out early one morning and tried it again with no luck. The lake was down a little and they were backing up the depth. I had just bought a new depth finder, with lake maps and spent a lot of time exploring since the fish weren't wanting to play. Late that evening I came back into MCP and ran from the interstate back across the grass line, trying to pick up a few crappie. After a few minutes, I saw fish hitting topwater in the shallow grass. I picked up a bass rig that had a grub on a weed less jig and hummed it into the shallows and brought back a small bass. And then it was a little better fish, and then even better. In 45 minutes, I caught 30 fish. Four over 4 lbs. the best was four lb. fifteen oz. I wanted to stick a bullet weight up her butt, one oz. shy of a five is rough, but I released all of them anyway. I read someone else's post on the forum, that the bass are acclimated to current and I think that he nailed it. According to the dam operators ( TVA ) the lake doesn't fluctuate more than two inches during normal operation, but they only check the elevation once a day, at midnight. I've seen the water rise and fall more than three feet in one day, on many occasions. The water level below Nickajack Dam has been four or five feet below normal for the past two weeks, while the lake level is at full pool or above. I can't understand why they would let the water level drop and fluctuate so much below the dam in spawning season for so many species of fish. The smallmouth are just moving in to spawn, or would be if they would get the water level where it should be. I think the reason for the scarcity of bass and other species of fish is TVA's total disregard for maintaining the water levels for fish to reproduce. And it's not just bass, you can't even catch any number of good sized brim or shell cracker on the Nick now or in the past several years. How do you destroy a pan fish population, brim can flourish in a mud hole. I know the Nick has heavy fishing pressure, but it has for many years, but the numbers have only fallen off in the past couple of years. And the last few years have been when I saw the fluctuation of the water levels. I've learned more new techniques to fish in the last three years than I learned in the first fifty, thank you [You Tube]. But I'm still not catching fish like I did just a few years ago, and I'm blaming TVA. It can't be me.
