I knew that there was a good chance that the shad spawn deal would still be going on, so we ran uplake a couple of miles to an area with some rip-rap, docks, and a little bit of grass. I worked a ½ oz War Eagle tandem willow spinnerbait around the cover trying to capitalize on the early shad bite. Around 6:15 am after covering a lot of water, I told Carl that if we didn’t get a bite on the next cast, we were bailing on the spot. The next cast produced a healthy 3 lb class largemouth on the blade. This keyed me in to the area a little better, so we moved out further from the bank and stayed on the deeper areas. I caught two more legal keepers including the big fish of the day off of the corner of a dock and added a keeper spot. Carl also caught a nice three pound class fish and another keeper in the area. So, I left the first spot with around 11 pounds on four fish.
We moved around a bit on some shallow spots with no luck, and at around 8 am, I committed to fishing out on the ledges to try to catch some better fish. I had three solid fish and one dink, so I would have 5+ hours to catch two good fish and hit my goal of 17 lbs. We spent a lot of time idling around looking at the electronics trying to find the mother lode of a school, but we didn’t find much.
I made a move to the dam to fish a ridge with some hydrilla on it, but there were two boats working it over. I eased upriver about a half a mile to a waypoint that I had put in sitting in the driveway at home that looked promising on the map. It was a ditch mouth that came up to 6 ft and on either side and then intersected the main river channel. On about the fifth cast, Carl hooked up with a nice 3 ½ lb class fish on the C-rig (smoking blue Zoom lizard). I knew the area had a lot of
potential, so we committed to working it over. I couldn’t get the fish to eat a crankbait, and after Carl caught his third fish on the rig, I put down the crank and went to dragging.
We worked the area on both sides of the ditch mouth, and we found that the sweet spot was a patch of mussel shells sitting in 6-10 ft of water between the hydrilla and the deeper ledge. The action was slow, but I was able to finish out my limit with a small club keeper, and Carl finished his off too. At around noon, I had a bite that felt much better, and I set the hook on a solid fish that was pushing 4 lbs. I was able to cull the little one, so I was now up to around 15 lbs. If I could catch one more 3 lb class fish I would hit my goal of 17 lbs. We fished hard for the final two hours, but we couldn’t find another good school.
The key to today’s success was picking the right early morning area to take advantage of the morning feed and also doing a lot of map study at home with the Navionics chip. I had marked ten or so ledges that I wanted to check on tourney day, and it just so happened that the first one we stopped on had a nice school of fish on it that we could work on for most of the day. Also, I have a good bit of experience fishing on TN River lakes, and I have a decent understanding of the places that the fish will set up to feed out off the bank. I love the challenge of finding fish out in open water, and it fits my strengths of dragging and winding out wide.
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