6 Attachment(s)
12/15/19 Watts Bar tailwaters
Dr Phil Gawthrop’s son in law was in for a couple of days of business meetings with the company that he works for and managed to squeeze in a deer hunting trip for a couple of days, but is flying back home to Idaho this evening and he wanted a Striper trip before he left, so Phil and I took him this morning.
TVA is flowing 63,500 cfs or more with 7 floodgates and 5 turbines running and water temp was 50.9 degrees and that made for bumpy drifts, but the fish were positioned where I thought they would be, so Adam had a great time. He said it was the best Striper trip that he has had but he hasn’t been on many. Grin.
Our bonus fish today were 3 keeper Walleyes and one White bass. We landed 22 Stripers aka Rockfish, and had 7 more pull off after a short fight.
Adam’s biggest fish was 16.5 pounds, over 30” long and skinny. It could easily weigh 20-25 pounds in March when it has had time to feed up after the summer fast.
Swimbaits in various colors produced all our bites. 1/2 oz Shad head jigs that I pour up with the plastics glued on did the trick today. Albino Shad was best color by a small margin. Sexy Shad, chartreuse, and another color that I can’t think of all caught fish.
Today the water was flowing the most that I have fished below a Watts Bar in the more than 20 years of off and on fishing. I didn’t exactly know how successful we could have in this current, but the fish were eager to bite.
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