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As I have mentioned in my two previous posts that there has been a relationship observed by a number of fishermen over the years that the fish sometimes really turn on that third day when the weather and the water conditions change very little. Fortunately, that phenomenon came true for me today on the French Broad River. TVA had consistently generated an average of 16,000 cfs from Douglas Dam for the third day in a row and the weather today was basically a carbon copy of what it has been over the past two days. You know you’re having a great day when you anchor the boat and don’t move from that spot for six hours. It was one those rare moments on the water when you have found a spot where the smallies are stacked up and you are catching fish on almost every cast. Also, they were in very heavy current and the fights were tremendous and it took about three times longer than it normally would have in what I would call “average” current flow. I ended up landing thirty-six smallies under those challenging and tough fighting conditions. The average sized fish appear to be larger than the past couple of days. There were your standard fifteen to seventeen inchers, but along with those were five in the eighteen inch class, three in the nineteen, and three that were twenty inches or longer. A picture of a couple of those fish are included in this report. It truly was a fantastic day of fishing. Tomorrow is going to be quite different in the water department. TVA has forecasted that instead of generating an average of 16,000 cfs for twenty-four hours they are going to knock it back to an average of 6500 cfs and only run two or more generators from noon to ten pm. That will completely change the fishing and not for the better where I caught the smallies today. That’s all part of the game when fishing these tailrace fisheries. Looking on the bright side,  maybe we would not have the quality sized smallmouth that we do on this section of the French Broad without Douglas Dam. I have learned to roll with it and know I am fortunate to fish these waters regardless of what TVA or Mother Nature sends my way. It’s all good!!!