I was fortunate to have Erika and Jared from Mobile Brochure with me today to shoot a promotional video for River Smallie Adventures. The goal was to take them fishing and give them a taste of what it is like to catch smallies on the rivers here in East Tennessee. The smallmouths did not disappoint as they started hitting right out of the gate. Erika and Jared caught a lot of fish in the two hours I had them on the water. They caught a variety of sizes of smallies as well some white bass and a largemouth. The trip was topped off by Jared catching a beautiful 22 in. 5 lb. 2 oz. lunker. I had a blast having them on the boat and was thankful that the fish cooperated. But it doesn’t end there. After dropping them off at the ramp I decided to head straight back to the spot where we had earlier caught those fish. If anything their feeding intensified from what we had experienced earlier. There were alot of threadfin shad in the area and periodically as the schools would move through a feeding frenzy would ignite as they would begin chasing the shad and start blowing them out of the water. I fished for five hours and caught forty-nine. The biggest fish was 22 in. long and weighed 4lb. 10 oz. The highlight was a smallie double I caught on one crankbait. I thought I had the smallmouth of a lifetime on, but when I pulled what I thought was a single fish alongside the boat I was shocked and surprised to see two nice smallmouth pinned to that threadfin shad colored crankbait. They individually weighed 3 lb. 14 oz and 3lb. 4 oz. Seven pounds and two ounces of smallmouth on one lure. I doubt if I will ever see fish of that size in that same predicament again in my lifetime. It was one of those rare days on the river.
April 30, 2017 River Smallie Adventures Fishing Report
