On the Road: Tennessee River Holds a Warm Spot in My Heart by Alan Clemons

gengberg December 11th, 2009

On the road: Tennessee River holds a warm spot in my heartThe Tennessee River has a great diversity of species including blue catfish like this one caught by veteran guide and world champion angler Phil King of Mississippi.Catfish Blue Phil King Small

If this column was about a team in one of the “stick and ball” sports helping push outdoors coverage off newspaper pages, someone might take a shine to calling me a homer for exhibiting bias.

Guilty as charged. Cuff me and put me in the hoosegow.

I love to travel to new places, to hunt and fish where I’ve never been before. It can be as simple as wading in a clear, rocky stream in southeast Indiana casting for smallmouth bass, or standing atop the deck of a flats boat in the Keys looking for a lolling barracuda or shark in a sandy opening in the eelgrass.

But I love the Tennessee River. I don’t get on it as often as I’d like. (Old joke: If you want to give up hunting or fishing, get in the outdoors industry.) But when I do get on one of the big impoundments on the river, it’s like being at home. I learn something every time, even on the days when the fishing is good but the catching isn’t worth a hoot.

I know there are other great rivers to fish on throughout the country. The Columbia, up in the Pacific Northwest, and the California Delta, the Coosa, the Chattahoochee, the Potomac, the beautiful Suwannee, and smaller ones that create great lakes. I know some have been omitted; I’m trying my best to fish ‘em all.

I’m partial to the Tennessee, though, because it’s home. More than 600 miles long, it runs through three states - twice through Tennessee, where it begins - and is replete with enough variety of species, structure and vegetation to last a lifetime. The river is home to some of the most famous, or at least well-known, lakes to anglers who chunk a lure, soak a liver or drown a cricket: Chickamauga, Guntersville, Wheeler, Pickwick and Kentucky.

If you’re a bass angler, you have largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass on the list. The world record blue catfish was caught in Wheeler back in ‘96, a 111-pounder eclipsed shortly thereafter, and other giants are found throughout the system. Shellcracker and bluegill attract anglers in spring from numerous states. White bass, hybrids and stripers are thick. In winter, bundle up for sauger and maybe a walleye or two.

Bowfishermen love the river for its shallow flats, a flood-control benefit from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s hydroelectric dam construction begun back in the 1920s. Roughfish such as gar, buffalo and carp provide all the shooting opportunities you want.

For anglers who want to learn a new technique, there’s no shortage of places to try. Take fishing a crankbait, for example. Pick a lake on the river and you’ll find scads of humps, channel swings, ledges, shallow bays, points, docks, boat houses, riprap, small creeks, vegetation and current (or no current).

Sometimes the river surprises me. Earlier this summer, my son and I visited Nickajack Lake in Chattanooga to go catfishing with guide Richard Simms. I’d never been and figured below the Chickamauga Dam, like the dams in Alabama, we would find deep scour holes from the turbine discharges.

“It’s maybe 8 feet deep, deeper in some areas,” Simms told me before we launched at sunrise. “The discharge isn’t like on the other lakes and goes out more than down and out, so the bottom isn’t terribly deep (with scour holes).”

Amazing, I said. We launched, ran to the dam and began a drift with chunks of semi-frozen chicken breast on light spinning tackle. Wham! There was a catfish. Wham! There was another. Eight-pounders … 10-pounders … a 17-pounder and then one over 20. We never got the monster cat that day, but I learned something and we had a fantastic trip.

Over on Pickwick Lake a few years ago, veteran guide Roger Stegall and I hit the lower end’s ledges throwing big Strike King spinnerbaits and Carolina-rigging lizards. Call me stupid, I guess, but learning there were such well-defined ledges - Mother Nature’s design engineer has a pretty deft hand - was eye opening. Those ledges produce smallmouth that can bend a rod and put a smile on your face.

The variety is probably the best thing about the river, I guess. Up on Kentucky Lake three or four years ago with my father, we put in at Birdsong Resort and eased into the cove just up from the marina. Beautiful little area. Shoreline with vegetation, a few trees down, a small creek and some deeper water on the west side. It’s one of those places where after you fish it once, you seem to remember every little detail.

Fishing had been tough on the other guys in our crew that morning, they told us later. Dad and I figured out a little deal and whacked some 3- to 5-pounders, along with some dinks, in just a few hours. Two years ago, we got on the island points at New Johnsonville and caught more than 40 in three hours. The Rock’n Runner blade bait I was throwing barely had a skirt on it by the end of the morning. Those are the days I’ll never forget, not only for the fishing but for the time spent with my father.

Everyone has a favorite place to fish, whether it’s a small shady creek where you catch 2-pound bass on worms and laugh at their antics or a big lake where croaking blue cats or a mess of bluegills make your day. Nothing wrong with that.

But give me the Tennessee and I’ll be fine. Y’all come visit for a while.

For information on fishing the Tennessee River, contact the following guides:

- Richard Simms, Chattanooga, www.sceniccityfishing.com

- Tim Chandler, Guntersville, www.mildrillafishing.com

- Doug Campbell, Guntersville, (256) 582-6060

- Jimmy Mason, Wheeler-Wilson, www.jimmymasonbasspro.com

- Roger Stegall, Pickwick, www.fishpickwick.com

- Phil King, Pickwick-Kentucky (catfish), www.h2othouse.com/catfish/

- Clagett Talley, Pickwick-Kentucky (multi), www.pickwickareaguide.com/

- Birdsong Resort, Kentucky, www.birdsongresort.com/

- Alan Clemons

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