Tims Ford Vacation

Every year my family and I take a few days to visit one of TN's state parks and see/fish some new water. This year it was to Tims Ford. We stayed in a cabin and generally had a great time. Fishing new water is usually not very productive for me, plus the lake was high and most folks I talked to were not having much luck. So my son and I decided we would set out some limb lines using converted long line jugs and yo yo reels that I had on the boat. We caught some bluegill and used those to bait the lines hoping to catch some flathead catfish. We ended up with 6 flatheads and 4 channel cats over 2 nights, with one really big one about 20 lbs. We fished with rods when we were through running the lines each day, and my wife caught a 12 inch smallmouth bass and that was it outside of the bluegill we caught for bait.

My plan prior to going on the trip was to fish the docks, which we don't have any of on JPP. But when we started fishing, we found that all of the docks were of the floating type with no wooden poles so that didn't work out for us.

My home lake is JPP, which isn't very deep compared to a lot of the other lakes in TN. So my question is, what do others do when fishing new water? And how do you usually find crappie in these really deep water lakes in TN? I know to look for structure, points, brush piles, etc, but still don't have much luck compared to the home lake. Any other pointers?

Here's a couple of pics of the trip.

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Fun times! Glad you enjoyed your trip!

Nice cats. Don't give up on the crappie there. Some good ones to be found.

Looks like a great time. Just wondering what size boat you have. Looks big enough for any type of fishing and most any kind of water

I have a 20 foot center console Xpress, with a 150 Yamaha and a 70lb thrust, 24 volt Minn Kota iPilot on it. It's a great rig!
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