Wanda's
Fishing Memories Part 2
by: Wanda
Dateline: 7/3/00
Tennessee has many lakes, creeks, and rivers, some with dams, which provide for a very wide range of fishing experiences. A friend once took me stripe fishing at Picwick Dam by the light of the moon, with a black light to illuminate our florescent line.
We tied up to an eye in the face of the dam and tossed out nine inch lipped deep diving minnow lures into the rolling waters about twenty feet from the dam. We let out line until we got a strike, which usually resulted in a 150 foot retrieve of a hard fighting two foot long striped bass! Since the limit was only two, we kept the larger one each time, releasing the smallest right away. Every cast resulted in a large striper!
The same friend once talked me into going along with a party of four guys carp gigging at night in zero degree weather in a specially rigged 16' john boat. The guys were taking turns gigging. The two teenage boys went first and then the uncle and dad of one boy started to swap places with the boys. That was a little precarious.
The first swap took place as the uncle made it to the front of the boat, and one boy came to the back. The edges of the river were fringed in ice, and the father and son both wound up in the river because the son decided to slide a boat cushion under himself just as his dad raised up off the boat seat to move to the front. The boat pitched just a little bit sideways, tossing the dad over the side, and the boat then pitched sideways in the opposite direction... before the son could even sit down on the boat cushion, so he pitched over the opposite side.
The trip ended abruptly. The two drenched fellows were shivering violently by the time we fished them out and got to shore. Luckily the propane heater we used in the boat also fit in the back floorboard of the jeep between the two of them, and steam soon rose from their wet coveralls as we drove back to town.
One of the men was a real estate developer who sold property through our family real estate office, so he was used to braving the elements! The same gentleman once took me day fishing to his secret catfish honeyhole on the Tennessee River, which locals call Ladyfinger Bluff. His john boat was rigged with an upright 55 gallon barrel as a live well. About thirty minutes in the backwaters with a cast net produced about two hundred minnows which we bumped bottom with.
We would drift down the shelf at the edge of the bluff, trying different depths until we located fish. We didn't have a depth finder back then. After each pass the trolling motor took us back to drift down again. We caught several cat in the 20 to 30 pound range, channel cat, blues, and even a white cat. my friend often caught twenty or thirty cat in a day, and some as big as 100 pounds or more.
Each year he hosts a community fish fry including real estate professionals, other business associates, and local law enforcement officers. He is an excellent cook as well! No one would turn down an invitation to his annual fish fry!
I once caught a three pound channel cat in mid afternoon in a gravel bottomed local creek by tossing a freshly caught live grasshopper into the branches of a tiny sycamore tree which was half covered in water from recent heavy rains. As my luck would have it, the grasshopper stopped just short of the water... dangling there, and in a flash, a cat came up out of the water just far enough to grab the grasshopper! Getting the catfish out of the tree wasn't too hard since the branches were tiny and limber.
The Tennessee River is about a 45 minute drive from here, and has provided much enjoyable fishing over the years. Those "pooling fish" at daybreak are often bass, and I have caught several on floating Creme worms tossed to the edge of the surface ring at daybreak!
One memorable trip to the river was about fifteen years ago and included my now deceased father, back when my three sons were young and still at home. Dad (a workaholic father of ten who never took time to fish) and I were "doing time" at our family Real Estate office on a slow Saturday afternoon, and I talked Dad into closing early, and joining my sons and me for a fishing trip to the river.
I had made some quick dough balls, and we were fishing on a gravel barge tied to pilings at a gravel dredging operation on the main channel of the river. The boys had caught some large blue gill off the front edge of the barge, but the dough balls were easily stolen. So, I looked around for natural bait, and was delighted to find live mussels in the "still wet" mountains of gravel on the shore behind us.
I tossed the last eight remaining doughballs into the water between the end of our barge and the next one. Then, son Matt (small for age ten) was the first to get mussel meat on his hook, and he dropped it straight over the end of the barge where I had just thrown the rest of the doughballs. As I was baiting another hook with mussel meat, Matt frantically called out to me for help, as his pole was bent more than double back under the sloped end of the barge, and he was about to be pulled over the edge by a very wide and heavy 28 inch channel cat that had just eaten all eight doughballs! I couldn't resist checking the stomach contents of that cat to see what it had been feeding on!
The gravel operation was later closed off from the public, limiting access to the barges. Now I fish Mousetail Landing State Park on the Tennessee River, mostly nightfishing for channel cat, and sometimes I toss doughballs out as chum "salting" a wide area to attract the catfish. It seems to work no matter what bait we are fishing with. Usually big nightcrawlers fished on bottom are irresistible even to large bluegill night feeding in the deeper water at the edge of the shipping channel, just off the point where the creek feeds into the river.
Large cat often elude capture by suddenly rolling on the line and snapping it in a frantic spin the moment they reach the surface when you are bank fishing, and my uncle says even the one pounders often know to spin on the line and snap it in deeper water when you are out in a boat ready to net them. My plan is to use heavier leader my next trip.
Some nights are spent "feeding" large schools of small striped bass, which most often steal the bait completely if the pole is left unattended even for a few minutes. Large catfish set their own hook as they usually hit with force strong enough to jerk a pole clean out of the holder, once even from behind the bench of a picnic table!
Favorite recipes: "Milk" (half fish stock) fish chowder with minced onion, garlic salt, black pepper, celery (optional), and diced potatoes is one of my favorite ways to cook fish (can be made with canned mackerel or salmon). Another is to butter fillets and sprinkle with Lowery's seasoning salt, cook "poached" in a little milk under the broiler in a foil lined (makes clean up easy) deep cookie pan or cake pan, until fillets are white with golden tops.
Frozen pollock, cod, halibut, etc., if frozen as separate fillets, can be used, buttered while still frozen, sprinkled with seasoning salt, and just enough milk to cover the sides and keep them moist during cooking under the broiler at about 450 degrees. Red Lobster cooks their broiled fillets with the butter and seasoning salt! No need to turn fillets since the milk transfers the heat to the whole fillet.
Serve with a five minute microwaved baked potato (pierced in center with fork to prevent exploding), and a little cole slaw, and hush puppies, to make a very quick meal fit for a king! The resulting fish stock and milk mixture is as good as fish chowder!
Good fishing to you and good eating!
