The Stripper fishing is good in the tail waters of Ft Loudon, Watts Bar, and Melton Hill. Tuesday my fishing partner Chris Smith and I had Ft. Loudon tail waters to ourselves, may be because it was raining cats and dogs and yes I did forget my rain suite but it wasn’t so bad because several of the fish were in the 20 lb class and Chris forgot his rain suite too. We were finally convinced to call the trip short because of the lighting.
Thursday evening Dennis Keeling, Dave Conner, and I met up after work to try below Ft. Loudon again. We had a great evening with several fish in the 20 lb class. We kept 6 fish for a total weight of over 100 lbs., which a friend likes to can. The can stripper reminds me of canned tuna fish and that is a lot of tuna.
Saturday I had promised a friend to take his wife’s coworker from Chattanooga Stripper fishing. We got their before TVA was to start generating to get some shad for bait and be ready for the scheduled starting time of generate at 11:00 am. After the bait had died and the next catch of bait also had died. We were getting hot and dehydrated and wondering if the water was ever going to generate.
At 1:00 pm they started generating and we started to catch small strippers in the 4 lb class. Art from Chattanooga had tried to catch strippers here before with out any luck. This day he got his first stripper and then 10 more, some weighing close to 20 lbs. It was a good day except for some yahoo on the bank who though it was funny to throw his 1 once lure as close to my boat as he could and he was accurate, several just inches from the boat. I even got a couple of his lures on the propeller of my motor.
Sunday evening I took Mason Woody and Austin Keeling, two fine young men from SOR to the Tennessee River to try our luck. We netted up some small shads and Mason got his first stripper even before I made my first cast. We only got to fish for 30 minutes before being run off the lake by a storm; they did not have rain suits and it would not have been right if I brought mine. It was probably a good thing that we got rained out. I don’t know if I could have stood much more of them two anyway. My face was hurting from smiling and laughing at them both.
Wednesday afternoon Mason, Austin, Jacob Parkinson, and I went back to the Tennessee River and had a great trip. Jacob caught his first stripper. Mason’s father Randall Woody and his friend Dennis Shirran were also fishing the same area. The competition was fierce but the kids won. We boated about 20 fish. It is always better to be lucky than good.
Take someone fishing, Greg