I visited beautiful Center Hill Lake in Tennessee last week and enjoyed fishing it for five days. It is very different from lakes around home but it was a great change, and I even caught some bass.

Located in the mountains in the center of the state about an hour east of Nashville, the lake is deep, has rocky shorelines and usually very clear. The floods they had this spring had the lake high and gave it some color, which helped fishing.

The greatest thing about the trip was the folks at the marina where we stayed. I was there for a meeting and tournament of members of a internet newsgroup, recreation-outdoors-fishing-bass. The mid-Tennessee Classic is an annual event but this was my first trip.

I arrived at Hurricane Dock Resort late on Tuesday and the office was closed. They had left my cabin key for me and I went to the small restaurant to meet some of the other guys already there. One of them told me he had decided to stay in town since he had his family with him. That meant a cabin was available on the dock side. My cabin was on the other side of the area, about a mile away.

Since I wanted to be with the group I asked if I could move. I quickly found out how helpful the folks there could be. I met U.L. who helps take care of the area and he drove me to look at both cabins so I could decide, telling me about the fishing the whole time. When I chose the one on the dock side he went to the office and got me the right keys.

The cabins are clean but rustic. No TV or phone, but plenty of hot water for showers, comfortable beds and kitchen for making meals if you don’t want to eat at the restaurant. I chose to eat there and enjoyed good meals ranging from a seafood platter to chicken livers and onions, my favorite.

Although the restaurant usually opens at 7:00 AM, they opened an hour early just for us and prepared a great breakfast each morning so we would be ready for our 7:00 AM tournament start. Plenty of hot coffee, eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits and anything else we wanted they provided.

During practice I quickly found out how different the lake is. The banks are rocky and drop off fast - I said there are no points on the lake, just cliffs! Spotted bass made up most of our catch although I did manage one 3 pound largemouth and a two pound smallmouth that fought like it weighed three times that. Both hit spinnerbaits. I also caught fish on top water plugs and Trick worms.

I placed second in the tournament. We had a three fish limit each day and I had three the first day but only one the second, which I will blame partly on boat trouble. The changing weather made fishing tough for us, and every inch of shoreline looked like it should hold fish, making it difficult to decide where to fish.

All during our stay everyone there went out of their way to help us and make our stay more enjoyable. A good example is what happened to me on Saturday. I hit a rock and my motor locked up that afternoon. When I came in using the troll motor, I told U.L. what happened and he said he would look at it. He ran a marine dealership there for 31 years and his son runs it now.

He went to check my boat rather than eat supper, and then his son joined us. They spent about an hour going over it trying to find out what was wrong. That is going way beyond what most folks would do. It was Saturday night and U.L. and his son had not eaten supper. They tried to help me out rather than eat.

If you want a great place to see some beautiful scenery, fish some waters very different from here and have a chance to catch not only largemouth but spotted bass, smallmouth and even walleye, check out Center Hill Lake and Hurricane Dock Resort. It is about 300 miles from Griffin, GA, a 4.5 to 5 hour drive pulling my boat. The drive north of Atlanta is pretty and even that is enjoyable.

Contact them at 931-858-2221 or visit their web site above.  I plan on returning to catch more of those hard fighting smallmouth and spotted bass and enjoying the great people there.