That's A Wrap

Water temps continued to rise as my week continued. By weeks end all the water was ranging between 58-61 degrees in the morning before the sun came out and warmed some select backs of creeks to 62-64ish. Water levels began to rise slightly on the last day I was there as the water from the dam was released and raised the lake a couple of feet but the fish seemed to be even more difficult to find as the water raised. Chickamauga is an amazing fishery. I wish I would have been able to hit it without water being at historically low levels heading into the spring like that. So many bays and sloughs were completely dried up and not navigable. Spoke to a few locals who said they had been there since 68' and have never seem the water this low ever before. Launching the boat was a chore each day and we even got stuck at one launch and needed to recruit a few locals to get us rope the trailer to get it off the back of the launch cement pad to get out. Saying all that. We caught a variety of fish while searching for those largemouth, including Smallmouth, Crappie, Shellcracker, White Bass, Bluegill, Sunfish and the largemouth themselves. My father and I enjoyed this trip together and caught some of the biggest crappie the two of us have ever seen before. Several 2-3 lbs caught on 1/2 spinnerbaits and crankbaits. The majority of bass were scattered. We caught some shallow, caught some deeper, caught some in between. Very rarely did we get more than one fish in an area. It was usually one and done and start searching elsewhere. The fish were all over the sqaurebill crankbaits and bayou bug jigs. Did catch a few on Alabama Rig, Rattletrap, Jerkbait and Berkley Chigger Craw rigged texas style. We had great accommodations at the Blue Water RV/Resort and would recommended their cabins to anyone. I will be getting some video footage together of some of the catches and underwater releases together later this week. Stay tuned!