Watts Bar Lake trip

Did a little R&R trip down to E Tenn at Watts Bar Reservoir, this past weekend. Took my buddy & site member Paul with me, and stayed at the Arrowhead Marina/Resort. Great place to stay & good people to do business with !!

Water temps were still warm ... generally around 67deg surface temps.
Sunny skies & calm North to Northeast winds prevailed.
Shad schools were all over ... mostly running from 5-10ft deep.
Crappie, on the other hand, were not that shallow :Doh:

Dock shooting only gave us one 11" White Crappie.

We were forced to "hunt" for submerged trees that the tops extended into water depths of 25' or more. We found two such trees, on two different days, and managed to pull around 15 Crappie (total) from those trees. Most were Blacknose, and ranged in the 12-13" lengths.

Me showing the thick backed Blacknose
Attachment 177790

Middle fish is a 10" White Crappie (for comparison)
Attachment 177791

Paul showing off a couple 13" Blacknose
Attachment 177792

Not as many fish as we would have liked to catch, but we can't complain about the quality/size ... especially given the conditions.

... cp :kewl

Not bad for a gewber.....glad to see you representing and wearing the C.C gear We do not have docks to shoot here and other than the spawn most of our fishing is trolling in open water on the big 4 I go to the old Tombigbee river to single pole

glad you had a good trip.

Good fish Pappy. I caught a blacknose up here in a river trib. last Friday. 8incher maybe. Might catch one a year it seems. None of them are that size though.

Good fish Pappy. Numbers help but don't always make the trip. Good company and quality fish and good condition make it a good time for me. Glad you guys had a good trip. I posted in the TN forum of a good blacknose I got yesterday. They so chunky......

Thanks for sharing Pap! Tough bite going on just about everywhere from what I hear. Need water temps to come on down some and then it should be on.

Thanks guys, I definitely enjoyed the trip ... and needed it, too :Rofl

Caught most all of these fish on jigs/plastics ... 1/16oz weedless jigheads with yellow/char tubes (Paul's choice) & popsickle CrappiePro Slugs (my choice). Cast/countdown method & Vertical Casting method worked equally well. Seemed like it would mostly go something like this :
cast - countdown - retrieve - limb - "thump" - hookset - net - livewell :woohoo

When we're catching quality fish like those, we're not too discouraged by low numbers :ThumbsUp

And "G" .... I'm ALWAYS representin' with my C.c clothing :biggrin as it's the best I own !! :notworthy

... cp :kewl