Watts Bar tailwaters, Sunday am 2/03/19

[drumking]

Dr Phil and I had an early morning start this morning and we targeted Stripers and/or Walleyes but they avoided our offerings, so we had to settle for bass and drum.

I started the ball rolling this am with a 3.1 Largemouth bass and then it was like the Dead Sea for a couple of hours and many lure changes to try to find something that would work. As we were about to give up and call it a morning, I suggested that we move downstream to the barge tie offs and fish the eddy water between them.

As it turns out, Phil connected with a respectable Drum that felt like a whale when it got into the 64,000 cfs current flow. Grin. I followed suit in a couple of minutes and also landed my screen namesake and I didn’t think we were ever going to get it to the net. Amazing how strong the water flow is when you have a 3 lb Drum tugging on the end of the line and using every trick in the book as it tried to get off.

Then we drifted with the current along riprap banks casting 3/8 oz jigs with 4” flukes on them and Phil had a beautiful 4 lb Smallmouth bass try to take his lure away from him. I did a great job netting his fish which was about 7 ozs shy of his personal best. That fish caused us to fish another hour before calling it a day. Water temp 45.2 degrees.