What do you think opens up first with some great game fishing, ponds, streams and small lakes or major reservoirs?
Surprise! The streams that lead to major reservoirs. How’s that so? Well, the streams that lead to the reservoirs haven’t stopped being good place for the summer, you just haven’t been there. Every option gets more productive as the temperatures fall, of course, but the streams that flow out of one major lake’s dam into a river that leads to the next lake are filling year long. Have you tried that? You’re going to be surprised. You will not be going to the “same old spots” in the lake but new eddies, points and river bends where you’ve never made a cast before.
And while all that works, please take an adventuresome trip up the river to cast into the churning waters behind the lake dams where the new cool water boils out from the upper lake.
My favorites are the lakes in Tennessee, but you can be successful almost anywhere. Not bragging but in the past 70s and early 80s before I stopped tournament fishing, I finished high or won by making the trip upriver to the next dam even having to stop for fuel at a marina on the way back to the tournament weigh-in. Don’t be misled, I didn’t figure that out, it was other tournament anglers that taught me. Be advised that it’s often fishing these waters is not permitted for safety reasons by the local law, but plenty of other “Dam” targets exist. My favorite was behind Watts Bar near Knoxville, Tenn. I’m not going to tell you because you will not believe the catches both me and my partners made of Largemouth Bass and Stripers. Then too, you can fish all day. The water flowing out from the dam doesn’t warm up, it stays cool round the clock. However, I digress, I’m afraid, the absolute best I ever visited is behind Wilson Dam on the Tennessee in northern Alabama. The first time I fished there with a super guide named Brian Barton (look him up) we two hooked up, missed a strike or caught quality Stripers to 40 pounds, Smallmouths over 6 pounds, Largemouths to 8 pounds and Giant Crappie ON EVERY CAST for three hours. So, there you are.
Wanna take a quality trip? Telephone and hire the appropriate local guide and give it a try and you will not have to wait until the reservoirs wake up. You might be asking why the fishing is so good behind these dams. It’s because the shad and other bait fish travel up current and spawn on the concrete surfaces of the structure and the shallow water boulders that are scattered about along the sides of the water flow. Enticed you enough to give it a try? GO. Oh too, take along a child and remember, “If you’re too busy to go fishing and take a child along, you’re too busy.”
Catch O’Neill on Saturday mornings on WSB from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. 750 on AM or 95.5 on FM.
