BASS elite at pickwick

[TnRiver46]

I fished in that exact spot 5 years ago today (3 days straight). Except Zaldain is in 190,000 cubic feet per second, it was more like 30,000 when I was there 

[TnRiver46]

 

[TnRiver46]

here’s what it looks like on a much slower current

 

now Zaldain got a big smallie with a large swimbait, pretty awesome what he can do with those lures. Same river as the last tournament but vastly different fishery 

[TnRiver46]

Just a little bit of current . I think if I flush my toilet at home it may reach that spot before the tournament is over 
 

[detroit1]

That's a nice striper. I wish we had stripers..?

[bowhunter63]

Pickwick is on my bucket list for sure

[Williep99]

That striper should count for weight for today only. Just looking to pad fantasy stats.

[TnRiver46]

Last tournament on TN river: gussy smashes smallies with light tackle in clearish water and they won’t eat Zaldains swimbait in the same area. This tournament on TN river: smallies are munching zaldains swimbait in muddy water and gussy didn’t get any keepers day 1. 

[scaleface]

Yesterday  Buddy Gross had a big bass get off at the boat . Then reflexively he lunged at it with his rod tip and crankbait , trying to snag it . If he had succeeded , would that snagged fish been allowed to be weighed ? 

[MN Fisher]

1 minute ago, scaleface said:

If he had succeeded , would that snagged fish been allowed to be weighed ? 

I would say no...it's snagged, not caught - despite how it got close to the boat.

[TnRiver46]

38 minutes ago, scaleface said:

Yesterday  Buddy Gross had a big bass get off at the boat . Then reflexively he lunged at it with his rod tip and crankbait , trying to snag it . If he had succeeded , would that snagged fish been allowed to be weighed ? 

Might count as Sight fishing??? Haha. He’s lost a couple more today. 
 

I thought largemouth didn’t like current???

[TnRiver46]

The smallies that Brock Mosely is catching seem abnormally huge 

[DitchPanda]

Would love to see Bill Lowen get his first big win. I like his fishing style..shallow combat fishing...very little use of electronics...flipping jigs and swim jigs. Reminds me alot of John Cox style. I've always been a fan of Lowen and his old school grinder mentality.

[bigfishnfreak]

TnRiver46, 

what is the depth of water at the spillway , were your picture was taken on slower current.

sure looks like a great place to live.

 

tight lines

[TnRiver46]

10 hours ago, bigfishnfreak said:

TnRiver46, 

what is the depth of water at the spillway , were your picture was taken on slower current.

sure looks like a great place to live.

 

tight lines

Zaldain said he was catching them 10-20 feet. I believe the lake rose 6 feet before the day of the tourney so I think its probably more like 14-15 foot average under normal flows. It varies greatly and isn’t a uniform bottom, there are massive boulders everywhere (and of course plenty of things sticking above the water and some right below the surface. That’s where the original “mussel shoals” were located on the Tennessee river, which was the worst set of rapids on the entire river before they built dams. They say Knoxville was actually a ghost town before some guy from Cincinnati figured out how to get a boat up through those rapids in the early 1800s. How’d he do it? Drove upstream as far as he could and tied  the boat off to trees on the bank and winched his way up. The shoals of course got their name from the all the mussels that were harvested from the river, in fact I think you can legally still harvest some but everything is a ways underwater now 

[roadwarrior]

We fished with the Big Boys Saturday from near the dam then down river below

7 Mile Island. We threw everything including the kitchen sink!  We watched a couple

of pros catching smallmouth just outside McFarlan Harbor. The water was high and

swift which made boat management challenging.

 

It was fun watching all the activity at the tent city with hundreds in attendance. Those

guys did a little better than us. If we had caught a 5 lb bass we would have had 5 pounds

to weigh in, but that didn't happen. A few "other species", but no keepers on our boat.  

[galyonj]

5 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

The shoals of course got their name from the all the mussels that were harvested from the river, in fact I think you can legally still harvest some but everything is a ways underwater now 

 

The Tennessee River used to be home to a bustling domestic pearl (and mother-of-pearl) industry from those mussels, too. I think that's all dried up nowadays for a lot of reasons.

[TnRiver46]

1 hour ago, galyonj said:

 

The Tennessee River used to be home to a bustling domestic pearl (and mother-of-pearl) industry from those mussels, too. I think that's all dried up nowadays for a lot of reasons.

For whatever strange reason I looked it up the other day and you can still get a commercial mussel license but I sure haven’t heard of anyone doing it lately 

[galyonj]

7 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

For whatever strange reason I looked it up the other day and you can still get a commercial mussel license but I sure haven’t heard of anyone doing it lately 

 

If I'm honest, I didn't know a single thing about it until She Who Must Be Obeyed mentioned a couple weeks back that she'd read something about how Tennessee used to be a big producer in the domestic pearl market, and then she said that "having a mussel farm" sounded "fun."

 

Lord help me.

[TnRiver46]

15 minutes ago, galyonj said:

 

If I'm honest, I didn't know a single thing about it until She Who Must Be Obeyed mentioned a couple weeks back that she'd read something about how Tennessee used to be a big producer in the domestic pearl market, and then she said that "having a mussel farm" sounded "fun."

 

Lord help me.

I don’t need any pearls but mussels are quite tasty 

 

 

 

Lordy 

[Way north bass guy]

5 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

I don’t need any pearls but mussels are quite tasty 

 

 

 

Lordy 

At least he’s got the good sense to keep his life jacket on. I can only imagine the amount of rocks just under the surface that if you hit em right with the trolling motor, you’d be in for a swim right quick! 

[TnRiver46]

1 hour ago, Way north bass guy said:

At least he’s got the good sense to keep his life jacket on. I can only imagine the amount of rocks just under the surface that if you hit em right with the trolling motor, you’d be in for a swim right quick! 

He said he was the first person to attempt getting there all week. Broke a trolling prop while trying to get back up to a big 5-6 lb smallie he had hooked and pinned in a tree. Then the smallie comes loose from the tree and breaks his line boatside . Here’s the video 

 

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CMuyDeDgO1R/?igshid=1lbcudo2tqkxe

[scaleface]

9 hours ago, galyonj said:

 

The Tennessee River used to be home to a bustling domestic pearl (and mother-of-pearl) industry from those mussels, too. I think that's all dried up nowadays for a lot of reasons.

Here in Hannibal Missouri there use to be a button factory . They used Mississippi river mussels  . I remember seeing mussel shells around town with holes punched in them .

[TnRiver46]

The water dropped over a foot, hank Cherry is on fire but watch out for Steve Kennedy 

[Fishlegs]

They're about to get hit by another line of wind and rain.