Mr S accompied me to the Watts Bar tailwaters this morning in search of Stripers or Marble eyes. I would have gladly taken a Drum after the first hour.

We had high hopes as I hooked a big Striper on our initial drift and he pulled a lot of drag and then I had him coming to the boat and he decided to pull more drag and then turned him back around and got it 1/2 to the boat and it pulled off. That was the only fish that we hooked up in the time that we spent up there. We finally decided that we had enough casting practice as we trie many different artificial lures.

We stopped fishing at 9:30 and headed back in the Chattanooga direction. I think that the surface temp is still too warm for a consistent bite. It was 68.8 and years of fishing for these fish has told me that when water temp gets above 65, then live bait is the way to go and I don’t do that and you all know how stubborn I am about live bait. Lolol

Current flow this morning ranged from 16,000 when we started to 20,400 when we stopped. Of all the times to have left my crappie rods at home. Bummer. We would have stopped and crappie fished the Hiwassee if either of us had enough sense to put a rod in the boat. But I didn’t want anything in the way while we Striper fished. It won’t happen again. Lolol.

I’ll be back when water temps hit high 50’s to 60 degrees. The fish are going to be sorry. Of all the boats up there fishing, we did not see anyone catching fish but one boat that was anchored in a very small spot and they were using minnows. Grin. No way that we could have fished that area and I won’t pull up on anyone no matter what.