Today is one of those days we all face as fishermen and guides. A day when the bite is tough. Of course I could be fishing the wrong spots with the wrong baits at the wrong time, but I’ve been out there enough to know when the fish have shutdown. It comes with the territory. I spoke with Bill the previous evening and shared with him that the fishing had been slow for the past several days. When the fishing is trending like this I always give the customer the option of canceling or postponing the trip for another day. I am more than happy to refund their deposit if they decide to opt out. Then there is always a chance that the bite may improve. They can’t stay turned off forever. Bill is an eternal optimist and said he would give it a shot. It was a beautiful bluebird day with the high in the low eighties. TVA has continued to release water at two generators or more from the late afternoon until midnight. That means fishing in heavy current. We started the trip drifting below Douglas Dam. He caught a nice walleye only seconds after we began our first drift. I joked with him about putting the “Hoodoo” on the trip by catching that walleye on his first drift. It wasn’t the Hoodoo, but as I feared the fishing was tough for the remainder of the trip. We had scheduled a six hour trip but after four hours of hard fishing Bill had only managed to scratch out a total of six fish. Three of those were smallies. We decided at that point to cut the trip short. A picture of Bill holding one of those nice smallies is included in this report.
River Smallie Adventures Fishing Report September 17, 2022
