Nickajack Riverpark report: 1/17/2016

**drumking** · 01-18-2016, 10:07 AM

There we wuz! Bundled up like it was in the middle of winter or something. WNW wind blowing well over 10 mph and bone chilling at that, but we endured until the sun came out and then we quit fishing and went home to warm up. Our objective was to catch big bluegills with crappie as a back up strategy, but started off fishing for crappie. The bite was pretty good, but we felt like the fish were as sluggish as we were. Bites were very light and were not just one bite after another, but over the course of 4 hours, we ended up with a nice catch of crappie, a couple of spotted bass, one little Smallmouth and one little Largemouth bass, gizzard shad, and one of my pet drums, and 2 bluegills over 9" with the biggest measured at 9.5". Dr Phil caught all the bluegill as I couldn't put my crappie jig down.

We had 12 keeper sized crappie with the majority at 12" or better, again the biggest was 13.5" and the fish were very healthy. We caught more short fish than we did keepers, so we had a good time. Most of the time we were trying to stay around the bridge pilings to block some of that wind off and had to move as the wind shifted a little bit more westerly as the day wore on. I probably would have paid $2 for a cup of coffee about mid-morning. I forgot to bring my thermos. Memo to self: "Don't forget the thermos during the winter time."

TVA still running 57,000 CFS, so we were limited in areas to fish. Heck, as cold as the wind was, I didn't want to be running all over the place anyway. I checked the water temp as it was 47.8 degrees, mid-morning. Bluegills came on nightcrawlers. Crappie and bass on BG plastics in a couple of colors.

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