spuds704
Well-known member
This is my first report, I've been checking out this forum for a few months, trying to figure out what I could do to put some fish in the boat. This has been the worst fishing I've had in 40 plus years of fishing Nickajack lake, it's been slow all spring and summer. So, we left Marion Co. Park at sunup and started out to go up to Benett Lake. On the way to the river channel we crossed a ditch running across the flats that had fish hanging on it, so we spent an hour tossing tx rigged worms, shaky heads, jigs and deep cranks and got nada, not a bite. Moved to the bank and threw frogs and jerk baits and got some more nothing. Went upstream past Hales Bar and threw everything on and around the grass flats that run near the river channel and, nothing. Not a strike, not one blow up in the grass, nothing. By this time, it's 11 o'clock and we're not happy. So, I told Gudger we should pull out and go below the dam and catch something, anything that would pull on my line, so, off we went. The lake was up and no noticeable current, below the dam, they had several turbines running and there was a little current running. On the first wing wall, bass were running minnows against the wall, and we caught four shorts there. Threw everything around the lock that was never finished, and didn't get a strike. Went to the short wing wall beside the turbines and threw Bojalie spoons into the boils and caught 1 white bass and two skipjack. After an hour of slinging a one ounce egg sinker with a spoon my shoulder was starting to say enough of this. We ran down to the Sequatche river and up past the interstate bridge to a couple of creeks that we've had luck before. First cast with a Texas rigged worm I hooked a pretty good fish, but lost it. Next cast on the other side of the brush top I caught a short. Worked our way down and Gudger caught the best bass of the day, maybe one and a half lb. Then, (this is the real reason for this report) I flipped a worm into a tree top and something started wearing it out. I thought it was a big bream, you know how they hit like a machinegun, so I lifted the rod and felt a little weight, so I set the hook and this thing went crazy. I've caught a lot of skipjack but they don't have anything on this fish. It came to the surface and turned on itself and went back down, almost snakelike in the way it moved, much more flexible than any other fish I've caught. It took about a minute or so to get it the thirty feet to the side of the boat and then I lifted it with the rod. It was a little over two feet long and weighed about three pounds. My first thought was that it was a snakehead,(it had the right shape but wrong color). It was greenish brown, like a bass but it had a long dorsal fin that was light and dark brown and its tail (that was shaped like a paddle) was red and looked like a basses tail when they've been fanning their bed. It also had some nice teeth, (a little like a saugar) that's why we don't know how much it weighed. We didn't know what that thing was so we threw it back and went on down. Caught a few more shorts but that was about it. I got home about seven thirty and got on the internet to see if I could Identify it but no luck. As I sat here I remembered an article in a science mag. that I read about twenty years ago about a fish that can live out of water for hours and can live in stagnant water with very low oxygen content by gulping air into it's swim bladder. And somehow I remembered the name ( I'm 63 and have CRS, so that was some feat) it was a bowfin. Bowfin is the one of the oldest freshwater fish in America, dating back to the Jurassic, 100 million years ago. Forty years of fishing and this is my first bowfin. Some of you plug slingers may have seen them but I was kind of excited about it. I'll try to post a picture latter if I can figure how. This is a great forum and I'll try to make more posts when I have some info to pass along.
