drumking, chickamauga, white bass and crappie, 8/06/09, Bassert

[FishNews]

Pat Ryan (Bassert) agreed to go fishing with me this AM for a short white bass schooling experience. We arrived up around the nuke area about 7:00 ish and very shortly thereafter, the white bass began their morning assault on the 2" threadfin shad that are there by the millions. The big crowd didn't show up until about 8:00. We stayed until 8:30 and then I wanted a crappie fix and talked Pat into fishing for 1 more hour for crappie. We probably could have caught a few more whites, but I really don't like fishing in such close proximity to other fishermen, although they are used to it up there. Everyone was nice and no tangled lines, but I just prefer being a loner if I can.<br /><br />Pat did the sporting thing and just fished for the whites with one lure. I, on the other hand, threw a pop-R with a trailer jig behind it and caught doubles twice. We landed 13 and 2 largemouth bass in all the melee up there. Several times when the fish came up they were out of range for us and a few times when they came up all around us, we would throw our lures in there and come away empty handed. We were fishing all around the boils. <br /><br />Then we fished vertically for crappie in another area and we landed 14 crappie in the one hour that we fished for them. This was a day when the fish were hitting the jigs on the fall and you wouldn't see the line twitch. The line would just go slack like a jig will do when it hits the bottom, but when you are in 40 feet of water and making 20' casts, somehow you just know that the lure isn't on bottom and these jigs won't go slack on their own. They have help doing that. SET THE HOOK, PAT and we would land the fish. Much fun and another little trick that Pat learned today.<br /><br />We caught the crappie on BG shads and panfish assassin lures with a tail light. Crystal shad or S/P did better than blue/chartreuse, or the pink/chartreuse today. On the way back to Tyner Lane, we looked ahead of us as we were running near a ledge on the east side of the river and saw some schooling bass. I cut the engine and we both managed to make a topwater cast into them just as they went down. Pat hooked up on his first cast and the bass threw the lure and I did a carbon copy. Bass hit the TW lure, missed it and then hit the trailer jig and then came off after a very short fight. The wind and current was so strong that it blew the boat over the fish and that was it. No more bites and the fish didn't come up again.<br /><br />I enjoyed the AM very much, Pat. Let's do this again some morning. Tomorrow, Hal and I will be out there chasing something. I don't know what just yet. I'm gonna let Hal make the decisions tomorrow and I'll just fish. emoBig emoGeezer