Fishing Forum

<br /> Long post covering 4 days with pictures!emoSmile We have been planning a trip for my wife's cousin to come see us for a couple years. Her husband has been watching the crappie reports from the Chick and finally decided to make the trip. They had never been to southeast Tennessee before although had done the Pigeon Forge tourist trap thingie before. I did a "pre fish trip" on Wednesday before they arrived on Wednesday afternoon and found some pretty nice crappie, hopefully knowing where they were on the start of Thursday, his first fishing day here. (See my Wed. report) <br /> Thursday morning we got an early start, before daylight, out of Soddy Creek. We only fished the river and had a great day with 63 crappie, throwing back 11 & 11 and a half fish to keep bigger crappie. One of my best days, 3 TARP's, one of which was over 15 inches!(My 2010 TARP total now stands at 17), Also had a couple good sized spots for the fish fry. We brought 30 crappie home for the fish fry. The weather cooperated with beautiful skies and light wind with the temps getting up into the 70's so Rich had a great day on the water not to mention that he had pretty much mastered the "dock shooting" technique of crappie fishing, (he had never shot docks and we went and bought him a good reel and a 5 & a half foot rod to do that with, rigging it up Wed. night so it was all new to him!) Friday morning was clear and cool with a little fog and we put in a Chester Frost Park to hit the lower end for that day's fishing. First couple docks didn't produce like I had predicted so we went north to fish some deep structure and a couple docks up around the Nuke. <br /> Friday produced some more banner weather and another day of 30 crappie limit. I also caught my best Small mouth ever, along with a couple fair sized spots. The Smallie was over 20 inches and weighed 5 lb on the dot. It was a fight, thinking it was a cat during the little less than 5 minute fight on 6 lb Mr. Crappie line and the light crappie rod. We ended Friday about 1:30 with 55 crappie to the boat. Rich had a 13 & a half FAT black crappie which I thought for sure was a TARP 'till we put the tape on him. <br /> Saturday I had decided to put in at Sale Creek to show Rich more of our great fishing lake. We started out before daylight on deep structure but it was very slow with Rich showing me how it was done by catching 2 keepers and me a skunk. As soon as it got light enough to run the river we headed out to hit some docks but the fishing was slow for us on Sat morning. The total count was only 15 crappie with only 8 fish over the boat minimum of 11 inches. We quit at 12, (Spur & BBass didn't know it was Ya'll or we'd have come over to say HI.) We loaded up and headed home to clean fish and have a very fresh fish fry. The girls did it up right with all the trimmings and Rich and I pigged out then watched most of the Nationwide race giving a "high five" to Kyle when he beat Halfwit Harvick at the end. <br /> All in all it was a great vacation weekend for our Memphis friends who say it's a sure thing that they will be back next summer for some more Signal Mountain hospitality and more great Chickamauga crappie fishing, ;&lt) Best lure for the crappie days was the BG Outlaw Special or various light greens/chartreuse Water temp held in the 67* to 70* range for the entire 4 days, emoSmile Thanks for reading my long post, now enjoy the pictures, emoTongue