Delane Davis has pretty cool wife. She bought him a fishing trip (with me) for his birthday. :grin:
We headed out into the Chickamauga Dam Tailwaters at the crack of dawn. Tried a couple of spots that have been good, but they failed miserably for me this morning. First time in a LONG time I've fished with only 18,000 cfs running.
So it was time to drag out the light tackle and "finesse" a few big cats (if you can call chunkin' a big hunk of chicken breast "finesse fishing). First drift Delane hit paydirt... and we proceeded to put several quality cats in the boat pretty quickly. Very few "little" fish today.
Most of the ones we coerced into eating were in the 10-15 lb. class... until Delane poked a real nice one.
This is what my spinning rods look like with a 27-pound blue pulling on the other end.
That bite slowed down so we headed downriver to hit some deep holes. We boated 3 or 4 more fish in the 8 - 13 lb. range. Didn't ever stick anything bigger, although we missed 2 or 3 of what I believe were real good fish. We were fishing whole (butterflied) bluegill... and not little ones. It was frustrating not sticking a real big one, but the 27 was Delane's personal best.
"Actually that first 8-pounder I caught was my personal best," he said with a grin.
We closed out our the day on the one bluegill honeyhole that keeps producing for me. In 30 minutes we had at least 15 "double knuckle bull bream," and a bunch of little guys.
As we departed Delane said, "I've caught more fish today than I've caught in the last five years combined!"
And that means that life is good and gettin' better every day!
We headed out into the Chickamauga Dam Tailwaters at the crack of dawn. Tried a couple of spots that have been good, but they failed miserably for me this morning. First time in a LONG time I've fished with only 18,000 cfs running.
So it was time to drag out the light tackle and "finesse" a few big cats (if you can call chunkin' a big hunk of chicken breast "finesse fishing). First drift Delane hit paydirt... and we proceeded to put several quality cats in the boat pretty quickly. Very few "little" fish today.
Most of the ones we coerced into eating were in the 10-15 lb. class... until Delane poked a real nice one.
This is what my spinning rods look like with a 27-pound blue pulling on the other end.
That bite slowed down so we headed downriver to hit some deep holes. We boated 3 or 4 more fish in the 8 - 13 lb. range. Didn't ever stick anything bigger, although we missed 2 or 3 of what I believe were real good fish. We were fishing whole (butterflied) bluegill... and not little ones. It was frustrating not sticking a real big one, but the 27 was Delane's personal best.
"Actually that first 8-pounder I caught was my personal best," he said with a grin.
We closed out our the day on the one bluegill honeyhole that keeps producing for me. In 30 minutes we had at least 15 "double knuckle bull bream," and a bunch of little guys.
As we departed Delane said, "I've caught more fish today than I've caught in the last five years combined!"
And that means that life is good and gettin' better every day!
