May Journal 2013

 

Memorial Day Weekend has Begun 24 May 2013

 

I was considering striper fishing on the Bluff City side but then asked my son. He said he wanted to give bass fishing a shot. Now we will kinda bass fish some, but I told him we would just set out after the rascals and see what happened. I gave him my GLoomis that I had built years ago, did this so I could afford it, and I took the bait casting rod. Side note, I need much more practice with the bait casting rod.

I give him the small root beer pig and jig, this has been effective on Boone for years. You catch a lot of small bass with this, but I thought that he might need to get use to the hits. I choose the watermelon copper crawl tube, which I don’t get seem to get to tangled with, except for the line twisting.

The wind is howling and I have a hard time fighting the wind, so we look for a spot with little wind. As we are fixing to leave, he sets the hook. I say get your rod tip… and it spits the hook. We laugh and feeling pretty good so far. I haven’t had a hit to this point and he has gotten a few.

We hit spot number 3 and the catching begins. The fish begin to hit pretty good and all of them seem to be on drop offs for my tube. I threw one over a tree limb, typical cast, and all the sudden the tube takes off. I begin to reel after trying to set the hook over the limb, but he got off. This is the first one I have hooked like this, it was pretty cool.

We see a snake and of course he wants to catch it, fortunately it did not hang around. He decides to try a bait casting rod. The casting was pretty good, only a couple of nest in the reel and I thought, he is already doing about as good as I am.

In total we boated 5 bass, 4 on the tube and one on a black lizard. We missed quite a few but the majority seemed to come around drop off at walls. We did not  boat any on a point. A few hits on points but none were boated. It was a great evening with my son. Hope everyone gets out this weekend and catches a few, take a kid with you and get them hooked.

 

Back to Boone 17 May 2013

Friday morning came and the withdraws from fishing were too great. We are not going to be able to take a week long vacation this year and this has been the wildest and busiest spring I can remember. With the weather looking good in the morning, I took a little vacation and decided to go after the hybrid.

I leave the house about 7:00am, only one hour later than I had anticipated, but waking up at 4:30ish to go to work everyday, I get an extra hour when I can. Launch behind the airport and head to Candy Creek. I get to talking to a gentleman bass fishing for a while and see plenty of shad. After great conversation I start throwing the net. The discovery is that the shad are plentiful, but the majority are what I call head pinchers. These are the ones that are the perfect size to get there heads stuck in the net.

I finally get enough bait for the time I am going to fish, it’s my moms birthday so I am planning on taking her to lunch (big spender). I head to the Dam, a wall is located there that holds bass and hybrid. I am hoping I am not too late for them, there are times you can wear them out.

When I arrive I cut the line to prepare a down line only to find out I have misplaced my 2 oz sinkers. So I throw out one flat line, then prepare my line for flipping to the bank. First cast I see a big flash toward my bait, it was just a tease, refusal from the fish. This usually happens when I am using a self tied fly, but live bait? Anyway, I flip a few more and get the largemouth. This was fun, not a big fight using my striper gear, but still fun.

I continue on down the bank and shad are flipping everywhere, I am thinking a lot of competition here. I toss one in, turn my head and hear a pop on the top water that just about made me jump out of my skin. The line begins to tighten and it’s a fight. As I see this hybrid coming to the net I think to myself, if a hybrid  got as big as a striper I would not be able to land it.

The flat line trailing landed the other hybrid and a smallmouth was taken. I thought this was pretty good for two hours of fishing. The angler I spoke to said he saw plenty of shad on the banks in Sugar Hollow and Candy Creek has quite a few. The water is up just like most places in Tennessee right now and the Bluff City fishing is not far away. Hope ya’ll got to wet a line this weekend and God bless, let us know how your fishing is going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 May 2013

This has been one of the more interesting springs for me that I can remember. I have not been able to do much fishing, but have got to have a great time with my son hunting turkey. This is the first year either of us have hunted for turkey and we are learning. We have had septic/field bed issues and the rain we have been having is not helping us a whole lot. This week we found out that our daughter is going to be having surgery on her ankle and will get to spend 6 weeks of summer in a cast. I told her she has now become my fishing buddy since she can’t swim.

Turkey season ends today so yesterday my son and I had a different approach. We would head to South Holston Lake, do a little fishing and a lot of looking for turkey and the opening day of squirrel. I labeled one of the above photos as arrival because it was an impressive amount of waves on the lake.

I have only fished South Holston a few times and have never had my boat there. The reason is that I like striper fishing a lot, but the smallmouth bite here at night has been good in the past. I had no idea where to go, but we are turkey hunting anyhow.

The day ended with a triple skunk, no fish, turkey, or squirrel, although we did see a couple of squirrel in the trees. However, there was an event that took place and the photos were great but do not do justice to how incredible South Holston Lake looks.

We were a good piece away from the boat ramp when we heard thunder. Now typically if there is anything remotely close to lightning in the area I get out of water immediately. We looked and the clouds were dark, we decided if it is lightning, we could pull to the bank, not a problem, it didn’t look like rain. We watched the dark clouds rolling quickly and figured to wait it out. As we continued to watch, we saw the rain coming, we quickly put on our rain coats and my son said, let’s go.

He had never been in the boat when it was raining, but here we go. The wind was up, the rain was falling and we started going. I look over at him and a face appears with a grimace. I say what’s wrong, yelling due to the wind and rain, he says, this hurts. I had warned him previously of how the rain will feel like needles when it hits your flesh and he was able to enjoy this experience for the first time, I am glad I was there.

We went past the 421 bridge, no storming on that side and we continued our adventure. I did not catch anything, but honestly, the fishing was half hearted effort at best. I did however get to spend the last saturday of turkey season with my son and figured I am going to head back up to South Holston Lake soon. I may just have to skip out on a striper trip and try to catch me a few smallmouth.

 

 

 

03 May 2013

The boat was fully charged and gas in the tank, I get off early and it is Friday. The plan was come home, eat, make a few calls, add fishing reports if any are available, then load up. I was going to go catch bait then meet my son after school, the plan.

The event began when I went to the computer. The computer crashing problems began. With my incredible talents on the computer I then began trouble shooting. That’s right, I turned it off and on until it worked. This consumed much of my time, looked out and the wind was blowing hard, so I canceled the boat trip.

Kids come home and we decide it would be a good day to fish from the bank. We head to Davis Marina and the boy is wanting to slay a catfish. He gets some catfish bait (today he was still getting the smell off his hands), and the daughter and I grab our quarter loaf of bread.

My son catches the first bluegill on bread and then goes strictly catfishing. The wind is howling and I say to myself about 4 times, man I am glad I didn’t get the boat out. We catch a lot of bluegill, nothing big but it was fun.

As I am standing there fishing, I go back to my days before the boat. I can remember sitting on the bank for hours fishing. When I got bored I would catch a bluegill or carp and have the time of my life. This made me stop for a bit and just remember how much I love to fish. I like trout fishing, striper fishing, & bass fishing. Have yet to walleye fish, but I am sure it would fit right in there. I like catfishing with the exception of putting some of that on my line. But as I pondered there was something in every species that I liked, it was the word fishing.

For an evening I got to put away my thoughts and just go catch a few fish. It was simple, fun, and time with the kids, and they aren’t even kids anymore. It made me think, I will be doing more bank fishing this year. Maybe they won’t be wall hangers, but the enjoyment of fishing with the family, well, bank fishing had it all that day.

 

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