Today, was one of those rare trips that start off like gangbusters from the word go. David from Indiana, was the lucky recipient of all that attention from those Little Pigeon River smallies. I took him to a hotspot, that over the past week, had morphed into a coldspot. It had treated my clients well for much of March, and the first week of April, and then it become a smallie ghost town. This is not my first rodeo at this spot, and I have seen this transition many times before. I always have my clients fish it for a while, just in case, the tide has turned, and the smallies have miraculously reappeared. It had literally been the Dead Sea for quite a while, when I asked Dave to make his first cast of the day. His bait wasn’t in the water, but a few seconds, when his spinning rod started to bend in that pulsingly characteristic way, that signaled to me, that this was not a snag. It was not a piece of wood on the other end of the line, that had found a home here, from the mid-February floods. It was a healthy, and hungry sixteen and three quarter inch smallie. I asked Dave to cast to that same spot, and in a matter of a few seconds it was Groundhog Day. Another pulsing rod tip, solid hookset, bent spinning rod, and in a matter of a couple of minutes, a nice eighteen and half inch smallie was being measured alongside my Golden Rule. Two casts and two nice smallies. Like I have joked with many of my clients in the past, I told Dave that it was bad luck to not only catch a fish on your first cast, but it is double trouble to catch two fish, in as many casts, right out of the gate. Dave quickly shrugged off that nonsense, and proceeded to catch another seventeen smallies in that same area. Two of those nineteen smallies, measured right at that twenty inch mark.The biggest of the two, weighed three pounds and thirteen ounces. The picture of Dave proudly holding that fish is included with this report. They were really nice fish, with seventeen of the nineteen smallies, measuring between sixteen and twenty inches long. From there, I decided to make a move upstream, and fish that spot, I have been talking about during my last three fishing reports. It fishes well, when the water is a little high, and stained. As we arrived to that location, I could see that the water now was a little lower, and clearer than I like it. It still held some fish, and Dave brought five mid-sized smallies to the boat. But it did not produce like I hoped it would. I have had several forty plus fish days in that location when the conditions are right. My best day, was with a buddy of mine from West Virginia a few years ago, when we caught sixty-seven in an afternoon’s worth of fishing. Dave and I bounced around, and hit a few more spots that coughed up a couple of more fish. I had the brilliant idea, of going back to where we started, so Dave could catch that evening bite. He had caught all of those of smallies in the middle of the day, in the bright sunshine with bluebird skies, so I hoped the evening bite might even be better. I did not anticipate, that TVA was going to cut back the generation at Douglas Dam, to half of what Dave was fishing just a few hours earlier with great success. Dropping water levels, and reduced generation in this spot, can some times really kill the fishing. Dave was able to scratch out a couple of more smallies, before we had to head back to the ramp. He finished the day, with a sturdy nineteen and a quarter inch smallie, that weighed three pounds and nine ounces. His total for the trip came to 28. These fishing reports, some times don’t do justice of how much I really enjoy guiding certain fishermen. Dave was one of those people. We had what I thought, were interesting conversations throughout the day, not to mention, that he was a really good fisherman, and an all around great guy to have in the boat. At the end of the trip, he said that he would like to come back next April for round two. No worries Dave. I’ve got you locked and loaded for next year.
River Smallie Adventures Fishing Report April 16, 2019
