drumking, chickamauga, stripers, bass, and crappie, 10-09-09, Hal

[FishNews]

Hal and I must be spoiled. After looking at the pics that I have to post with this report, I don't feel quite as badly as we did on the water, trying to figure out what in the world was wrong with the crappie.<br /><br />For one thing, we only hit two of our favorite docks because of the gale force winds. But that story is for page 2.<br /><br />This morning, Hal and I made a run up to Watts Bar tailwaters for what we hoped was some hot striper action. Turns out that the fishing up there was as tough as the fishing down here. Hal struck first before daylight with a 9 lb bluecat. Then I landed a small striper in the 3 lb range just at first light. Then I had a nice keeper sized striper, 8 lb 12 oz, hit my jig and the fight was on in the swift current. WB was running 4 turbines and I had quite a time with this fish. Made my wrist hurt before I finally got this fish to the boat. I am having this fish for supper so don't anyone groan because I didn't release this fish. Stripers are my favorite fish to eat.<br /><br />Then I landed a drum and that was it for the tailwaters. We quit at 9:00 am and headed south to crappie fish for the rest of the day. It has been quite a while since I have seen the crappie as inactive as they were for us today. We only landed 19 with 9 being big enough to make Hal's fish fry coming up in a couple of weeks.<br /><br />But the spotted bass made up for the crappie. We caught about 6 or 7 of these with 4 being large enough to keep. I landed a chunky largemouth that was 1/16" shy of legal size, but was so strong that we thought it was a smallmouth at first. This fish did not even try to jump but peeled drag coming and going with me for a couple of minutes. Turned out to be an old trashy green fish. emoBig <br /><br />We wore each other out putting on rain suits, keeping them on for 2 minutes, then taking them back off, only to put them back on 30 minutes later. We finally just gave up on the day. It was fun being out there, but not one of better catching days. There are still some idiots driving cruisers up and down the river at 1/2 throttle and throwing ocean sized waves. Either park those things, idle speed or put those darn things on plane.<br /><br />At Watts Bar tailwaters, we fished with 3/4 oz jigs with sassy shads and another swimbait that I forgot what the name is. I caught the drum on a Mann's hardnose 5" minnow. For the crappie and bass, we caught them all on bg shads in various colors. That's it for this report. I can almost taste that striper right now. Yoo Hoo. emoBig emoGeezer