Stripers 5/22/18

[drumking]

For the past 5-6 years I have been helping the students at the Chattanooga Christian school in February with their interim fishing classes. Matt Monahan is the teacher who has been leading this and getting the students excited about fishing. He has wanted to fish with me ever since the first year and he has been so busy that we could not get together until today.

He specifically asked that I take him to the tailwaters below Watts Bar and show him how to fish in all that current. On the 50 minute drive up this morning, I talked about what we would find and gave instructions on how and where to cast in order to present our artificial lures correctly and that would give us the best opportunity to catch one.

TVA was running a little over 38,000 cfs this morning and I knew ahead of time where we would have best chance to hook up. We ran up to the dam and slipped into the current just below the wing wall. I told Matt to go ahead and make a cast while I moved to the front seat to deploy the trolling motor. I did that and made a cast and looked at Matt and he was already hooked up. It took every bit of 15 seconds for him to hook up.

That little 8 lb Striper gave him a fit and I wish you could see the grin on his face. We ran back up for the second drift and it took him about 2 minutes before he hooked up with one a little over 12 lbs. 3rd drift he hung up on bottom so we pulled that jig off. Then on the 4th drift he hooked a big Striper that he fought for about a minute to a minute and a half and it just pulled the hook.

On the 5th drift, I hooked a big Striper very close to the boat and it headed upstream on the dead run. In all that current I didn’t have time to loosen the drag and the fish broke my 20 lb braid. First time this year that I have had a break off like that.

That was it for us except for a couple of Drum that Matt caught and I landed a white bass. We had a nice long drift back to the ramp as we were sharing the gospel with each other and it was richer than all the fish that we caught. We were off the water by 9 AM.