Troutgirl

Those are some nice looking Salmon! That first one looks like ya'all shot it in the abdomen the way it's bleeding....

Try Dale Hollow and Old Hickory....they're not so far.

Rex and I went to Watauga yesterday and had a good time. We got there at the break of dawn. We pulled over to the dam and dropped the Fish Hawk TD in. It didn't work correctly. The surface was was 79 degrees. After I pulled up the TD to review the temperatures, it skipped showing the first 25 feet. The readings ended at 100 feet although I dropped it much farther. It was about 53 degrees at 100 feet. I may need to exchange my Fish Hawk. It's not working as it should. There were fish all over the sonar at the dam. If I had jigging lures, we might have tried that before trolling. We started trolling upstream and put out 5 lines. I put out a downrigger spoon with a Mack's 4 inch Double D Flasher in front of it at 62 feet. We put out 2 Dipsy lines. One had a Magnum diver and the other had Size 1. We put out 2 lead-core lines with plugs. About 7:25 a.m. we got our first strike and Rex reeled in a 20" Laker on the size 1 Dipsy line. Then we had a drought that lasted till 9:45 when we were in the narrows, past the Butler Bridge, headed towards the upper lake. I caught and released a small Laker on the Magnum Dipsy line. Then Rex caught a 19" Laker on the smaller Dipsy line. It was bleeding so we kept it. We reached the upper lake and made a big turn and went downstream. After 9:45 a.m. we started catching fish steadily on the size 1 diver line on a yellow spoon with black polka dots. I think that we caught about 15 Trout. We managed to catch a pair of 14" Rainbows. The rest were Lakers. The releases mostly went well but I'm sure we killed 2 of the released fish. The lead-core plugs caught 2 fish including the biggest one that was 21". I varied the downrigger between 62 feet to as deep as 85 feet. The only fish it caught was at 62 feet. The size one diver caught around 10 fish. I eventually parked the Magnum Dipsy and we ran two size 1's without the ring that increase depth. They must have been running about 45-55 feet. That must have been where the bait was. As the day progressed, we saw more and more bait. We fished till about 3:45 p.m. We took home 4 Lakers and the pair of Rainbows...... I have pictures but don't know how to load them. A box comes up that says I'm only allowed to load pictures up to 501.76 KB. I just got a new camera. It has more resolution than the old one that died. I don't know how to get around this roadblock.

Rex and I are considering another run to Calderwood Tuesday morning. He's not scheduled to work Tuesday, so, we might go.

The Calderwood Trip That Never Was I couldn't get my boat out for a Friday trip this week because my sister's backyard was too wet to drive to it's resting place. Another forum member, Captain K offered my brother and I a ride to Calderwood for a morning of trolling. Well, the three of us rode 'the Dragon over the state line but when we arrived the driveway into the ramp it was blocked by a huge tree that out-grew it's roots and collapsed. It took out the power line to the ramp and totally blocked the road. We turned around and drove back to Chilhowee Lake where all we caught was a pair of Rainbows and two Perch. Chilhowee doesn't fish very well lately....

My brother and I hit the top end of Tellico Lake this just past Thursday morning. We put in at Harrison Branch Ramp at sun up. The surface water was 78. That seemed rather warm. We trolled downstream pulling 4 plugs. We wentr downstream almost as far as where Carson Island used to be. We never got a strike. We never saw significant bait or fish on sonar. We returned to the ramp and went up to Chilhowee Lake for a few hours. There, we caught 3 little Rainbows and a throw-back Perch. We quit in the early afternoon after we got drenched by a heavy shower. I don't know where Chilhowee's lost Rainbows that left went in Tellico Lake. They don't seem to be in the top end. They might be as far downstream as the dam? When they first filled up Tellico Lake, TWRA stocked Rainbows at Tellico Dam. I went there one night and tied to the dam. We caught about a half-dozen puny Rainbows. Then we pulled up stakes and went to Chilhowee Lake for the rest of the night and caught bigger fish. I would not be surprised if Chilhowee's lost Rainbows are way down the lake sitting deep....???

Lake Trout are a very quirky species. I've read all sorts of articles about them, most of 'em are written in Canada. Nearly all the articles say Lakers don't feed at night. I hooked and lost a decent sized Laker at Chilhowee at night. I talked to a guy that caught some at Chilhowee, at night, casting Zara Spook topwater plugs for Bass. My conclusion is Canadians don't fish at night. Another thing I've read about Lakers is that they have two or more segregated populations in most trout lakes. I was reading about the Lakers of Great Bear Lake. The researcher said their were 4 distinct populations of Lakers. He suspected there were possibly were 2 more groups too. They segregate themselves by what they feed on and then they only breed inside their group. In Lake Superior, there's a group of Lakers that stay at least 250 feet deep for all of their lives. They call them several names. The one I remember is Fatties. Their stomachs are greatly distended and they have a very high oil content. Commercial fisherman have advocated fishing for them just for the oil. The author of the article where I read this claimed that fishing for them would deplete them in 10-20 years.

It takes only a few minutes to post pictures on Facebook. They have a page. They should use it!

Why doesn't Fish Springs put up pictures of the winning fish? They have a website and a Facebook page.

I can't remember the last time I caught a Sauger. It might be as long ago as the late 60's or early 70's....? They were all over the upper end of Fort Loudoun back then and then they disappeared. They were my favorite fish to eat back then....I hadn't caught any Walleyes yet.

The overwhelming number of Lakers I've caught at Watauga this spring have been 17-19". There's a few big ones stirring but they seem to be few and far between. A huge one broke me off on my first trip of the season. It only took two big head-shakes to snap my 10 pound line.....

I finally made it Dale Hollow this past Thursday. My brother went with me. We didn't do at all well at catching Rainbows. We only picked up a single Rainbow on a Dipsy Diver spoon. We didn't see many substantial baitballs. The biggest one I saw was at Mitchell Creek Marina in the morning. Our first strike was the Rainbow just before we passed a marina on the right going out of Mitchell Creek. Then we got snagged in front of the marina when I mistook a navigation buoy for a marina buoy. Oh, my Fish Hawk TD malfunctioned when I used it. It gave me the temp at 70 feet, 53 degrees, but wouldn't give me the temps at 5 foot intervals. The button didn't work. The surface water was 85 in the morning and 88 by afternoon. That seems awfully hot for this time of year. After an afternoon break in a shady spot, we started trolling a plug on a flat-line behind a board. That produced a a small Largemouth and a 3+ pound Smallmouth for my brother, his first ever Smallmouth. I caught a nearly as big Smallmouth on a Dipsy Diver spoon. So, the trip ended a little better catching some decent Bass. The only Bass I've ever caught before on spoons behind Dipsies have been Spots at Watauga.

Maybe they should be checking the stomach for Purina Crappie Chow...?

I was thinking about the Trout Tourney but only if it was gonna be cooler with enough rain to keep the pleasure boaters at bay. I don't like the forecast!

Watauga has sluiced and generated away much of last winter's water already. I remember looking at the TVA flow site some while back and the predicted in-flow of the lake was over 13,000 CFPS. That's BIG water in much larger rivers. That's 13,000 CFPS of prime, cold trout water saying goodbye. Conditions are akin to late July, early August now. How deep will we have to fish in 8-10 weeks...? It might be way deeper than we're accustomed to....? The best thing that could happen now would be a relatively dry period and a big slow down in generating. We caught our first Laker on a spoon behind the biggest Dipsy Diver and never got another strike on that line till I changed it to a shallower diver late in the day. The size zero and one Dipsies both got strikes. We only caught one fish on the plugs I tried. I left the big Dipsy out a long time thinking it would continue to produce. There sure looked like there was a lot of feeding in the 30-50 foot range. We were a bit snake bit....we missed so many strikes or caught dinks that had been stocked not so long ago....