After yesterday’s trip with Greg from Tennessee, today, I was joined by another Greg from the state of Delaware. He and his wife were vacationing in the Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville area for about ten days. Greg is an experienced angler, who specializes in fishing for trophy largemouth. He has plied the waters of some famous lakes from all over the country, that now, or at one time, have housed some of the biggest fish that the species is capable of producing. But today, he would be scaling down in size to tackle some of those river smallies in the two to four pound range. The water yesterday, on the Little Pigeon was a little high and stained, but it did produce some nice fish for the other Greg. As expected, it had dropped even further, and although still stained, it was certainly fishable. Because it was still running a little fast, I opted again to put Greg on the smallies further upstream than I normally would have, if the Little Pigeon was about a foot lower, and a lot clearer. There is one spot that can really produce a lot of quality smallies, and some really big fish on occasion, when the water is stained and a little high. Greg worked that location over with a fine tooth comb, but he was only able to coax out a couple of seventeen inchers. The water was still a little high and fast for the fish to hold in that location. I have another guide trip tomorrow, and I believe the conditions will be where I want them to be for those fish to stack up, and hopefully be ready to eat. Greg was able to fish that spot from the bank a couple of days after our trip. The fish were still there. He texted me several pictures of some nice two pound plus smallies from that hole. He ended up catching about a dozen smallies with one of his favorite swimbaits. From there, I made a move upstream to fish the same spot that held some really nice fish just twenty-four hours ago. Fortunately, that area was fishing well again. During that last hour and half of the day, Greg managed to land thirteen smallies from that spot. Seven of those fish were between sixteen and eighteen inches long. They weren’t the double digit largemouths he has caught over the years, but they were those feisty single digit smallies from the Little Pigeon River that appeared to put a smile on this trophy hunters face. Greg was a great guy to have in the boat. I hope he makes a future trip into the area, and decides that he needs to again spend a day away fishing for river smallies here in beautiful East Tennessee.
River Smallie Adventures Fishing Report April 11, 2019
