There are lots of good public areas to fish on Chickamauga and on the riverine part of Nickajack. What part of town do you live in? If you get a map of the lake that shows the river channel on it you can see where the channel comes up close to the bank. Some of those places are public spots that you can easily get to. Bridges of course are where a channel goes through a "neck down" area and tends to concentrate fish. The dam both above and below is a good place to fish but fishing below the dam is different because of the swift current. Sometime in the next few months, probably when the water temp gets into the low to mid 50s there will be bluegills stacked up in the eddies behind the pilings to the fishing pier below the dam. If you fish straight up and down in the eddie current and use a sinker that won't get pulled around by the current much and won't hang up(some locals use pieces of wire hanger) you can catch tons of real slabbs behind those pilings. The flow may not be right every day down there to do that but when it is you can load a bucket pretty quickly. Chester Frost, Booker T. Washington and Harrison bay state park all have good places to fish. Look for where the channel comes up close on the map and fish there first. This area is blessed with loads of great places to fish from a boat but also from shore if you know what to look for. Come to the map study tonight and I can show you some spots.
