Fishing Forum

Praise the Lord. Today was the first time that Rick (Bent Rod) has been able and felt like going fishing since he first got sick several months ago. It was my great honor and privilege to ride with him on one of the prettiest lakes in Tennessee. Tims Ford aka "The Dead Sea" can be a very difficult lake to yield up numbers of crappie. It was slow for us for a good while, but we finally found some very good fish. <br /><br />We found fish on one dock very early in our search, but they were all 9.5" long and were nearly all black nose crappie. I love these fish. We ran to a different part of the lake and scanned some more docks, but they were void of fish. I tried to talk Rick into going back to the first area and look for brush, but he wanted to check on one other place. We scanned about 6 docks that were void of fish and were just about to turn around and move back to our original place, when the last dock we checked had a mother lode of slab crappie under it.<br /><br />We landed 14 keepers and only 2 throwback crappie there and they were 10" long. I was lucky enough to catch 2 TARP crappies. One a black nose and the other just a plain old black crappie. These fish fight like gang busters. Our total catch for the day was 24 crappie with 14 being slab keepers. Not too bad a day when neither one of us had been on the lake for months. I love this lake and plan to go back just as often as Rick feels up to fishing. He is still gathering strength and weight from his ordeal. We caught our fish on Bobby Garland Baby Shads in Monkey Milk, Ghastly Minnow, Patriot, and Albino Shad colors. Although the docks were in deep water, we had our best luck with 1/32 oz jigs. We did catch all the shorties at the first dock on 1/16 oz jigs. <br /><br />Water temp at Tims was different in parts of the lake. Our first stop, the water was 68 degrees. At the last spot, it was 64 degrees. Wind was out of the north, but not very hard. It was glassy calm by the time that we quit fishing. Rick, thank you for taking the old DK fishing for his favorite fish. I'm glad that we got you some nice fish for your freezer. All keepers went home with Rick. emoThumbsup emoBig emoGeezer