If you are ever out on Watts Bar Lake you may come across an old man in a little aluminum fishing boat slowing pulling on a trotline. Its a little boat with a mighty 10 to 20 horse power motor (depending on what is working and if one has been stolen recently). The joke around Mom & Pop’s General Store this summer (2005) was about the old man’s boat being tied to a wheel barrel and both are now missing.
He collects antique boat motors also and will always tell interested customers for the antiques that one in the bunch will work; of course that is the wooden paddle. Anyway to the story. A number of years ago either Coach Jim Davis (now Clemons Women Basketball Coach) or Andy Lander (now Georgia Bull Dog women’s coach)was at the old man house trying to get a few coaching pointers while they were coaching a Roane State. In the course of the evening it was time to run the trotlines for the big cats. As the old man was running a line and baiting the hooks he would often skip a line that ran deeper into the water. The curious visiting coach asked the old man what was on the line that he was not baiting? The old man, winner of many girls’ championship games and tournaments proceeded to pull the next long leader line up to show a figurine of a trophy. He said with a tinkle in his eye, “We just won so many that we started using the trophies as trotline anchors, maybe you will be so fortune”.
Story submitted by Ronnie Woody