Thread: WB tailwaters 4/02/19

Dr Phillip and I had some good luck and some bad luck this morning while fishing below Watts Bar dam for Stripers and White bass. The good luck was several hookups on Stripers and the bad luck was 6 out of 9 pulled off. I was using some new hooks that I poured up and we are blaming the pull offs on them. I came home and threw them all away.

On the first drift, I hooked up a big Striper that stripped my 20 lb braid down to the backing before Phil got the big engine running and began to chase it down. It was on about 3 minutes and I got my braid back onto the reel and the fish just came off for no apparent reason. That happened two more times with me with one fish straightening the hook out.

Phl had 3 Stripers pull off before we went back to my bronze 4/0 hooks. That eliminated the pull off problem. The big White bass were up there and very aggressive. The biggest that I weighed was 2 lbs 3 ozs. Two others weighed 2 lbs 2 ozs. I quit weighing them then but most were pushing 2 lbs each. We kept 20. We fish for over an hour and drifted and fished the seams. We caught one or two on each drift for at least an hour and 20 minutes. Much fun. A couple of the Striper runs got my forearm muscles to burning, grin.

Phil caught the only Walleye but it was his second best ever. 4 lbs 12 ounces. My biggest Striper landed was 12 lbs 10 ounces. No Drum were caught. Lolol.