Bored on the Bar or Size Matters

Visited Watts Bar today with visions of a live well full of crappie caught by pulling planer boards. Planer boarding has been a very effective the past several weeks on Tellico and Chickamauga so one would figure things would be the same on Watts Bar. Wrong! It wasn’t for me anyway. On Tellico a few days ago I caught 47 crappie with 25 keepers in just 3.25hrs in 65 degree water temps pulling boards. Pulling boards on Watts Bar for over 4hrs yielded nada! Zip! What a disappointment!
Anyhow pack it all up. Switching over to single pole fishing I started out with two inch baits in various colors and wasn’t seeing all that much activity. As expected I eventually got hung and broke off. Downsized to a panfish assassin this go around and immediately started catching fish in the same location. Tried a few different colors in the panfish assassin and it didn’t seem to matter. They just wanted that downsized bait. Livewell was starting to fill and I told myself I’m out of here when I reach my limit. Got to my limit and thought to myself, just one more. After I caught one more crappie I thought to myself, just one more. Anyhow you all know how it goes. Eventually called it quits with 25 crappie being caught and 17 keepers.

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Nice job, she is a fickle lake! Go big or go home ...

Nice !!! (I hope you didn't keep all 17, the limit is 15 :Doh: ... unless, of course, you had a partner in the boat)

From what I've heard/read on here ... Watts Bar does seem to fish quite a bit different than the other lakes connected to it.

According to the two sows in your picture, it would seem that (barring any major weather changes) they should be moving into the banks in the next week or two. Them girls look pretty plump !! :biggrin

... cp :kewl

We visited first of week Geno and same results. Watts Bar is always about a month behind the Chick. Year in year out I've got it in my log books but just like you I've got to make a trip to keep from having nightmares. Glad you caught them the one pole way though. good report. See you Sat I hope at Cherokee

So why do you all think watts bar is generally a month or so behind the chick?

Farther north than Chickamauga. The Crappie in Harrison Bay are already getting their dark black color and moving in shallow. About 10 miles up they are still staging and do not have any spawning color yet.

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Originally Posted by Kingfish1

Farther north than Chickamauga. The Crappie in Harrison Bay are already getting their dark black color and moving in shallow. About 10 miles up they are still staging and do not have any spawning color yet.

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Very true ... and I think the change in "when" they bring WB up to Summer Pool has something to do with it, too. TVA changed the timing several years ago, and it's thrown the spawn timing off IMHO. It's not scheduled to be at Summer Pool until the middle of MAY, according to the TVA Operating Guide site : https://www.tva.com/Environment/Lake...perating-Guide


... cp :kewl

Nice looking fish and way to stay after them and not throwing in the towel. You mind me asking what the water temp was?

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Originally Posted by Big Ridge Brewer

Nice looking fish and way to stay after them and not throwing in the towel. You mind me asking what the water temp was?

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Sure no problem. Most areas were at 57 degrees but one area I entered was 59 and think I saw it hit 60 once or twice.

I did take notice to a difference in the female fish that were caught.
If you looked at the anal area on the two fish on the left, they appear very normal.
But if you take a look at the two on the right you can see they were red swollen and appeared to be close to bleeding.
I believe these fish on the right are on the verge of dropping their eggs. This condition occurred with most of the larger fish caught but they were not up in the shallows.
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It was 54 last Saturday up in Anglers Cove and Caney Creek. Appears to be warming up not sure how this cold front will affect the temps.

I noticed last year when fishing Watts (grant it the weather was't the greatest) that the females weren't dropping eggs yet and only a few were coming up above 10ft. I was using minnows and typically only the smaller minnows were getting nabbed. A buddy with me was pretty effective with catching using monkey milk color. Nothing to brag about though and certainly didn't get close to limit. If the winds blowing it's tough to stay on that lake. We were fishing there around late March early April.

The Bar is further north and is a deeper lake taking longer to heat up. That's my story and I'm sticking to it till we can ask Mike Jolly or John Hammon. both great speakers at our last to Meetings.

Nice report. Way to stick with it.

good report gene, them are some nice fish

Good report and way to stick with it.