Night Excursion with a Kayak Newbie

  To set the stage I will give you a little info on the Tennessee area that we had our sights on kayak river fishing and as it turns out lake fishing too. The area I was concentrating on was in between Crossville & Wartburg, TN. There are two main areas that I knew contained some really big fish. The first was the Obed-Emory National Park which contains the lower part of Daddy’s Creek and Clear Creeks and both the Obed & Emory Rivers. The other was the Catoosa Wildlife Management Area which contains the upper section of Daddy’s Creek and a section of the Emory River below the Obed confluence. I knew this remote area pretty well since I had made at least 5 or more fishing trips there in the past with the most recent trip 10+ years ago. Since I had at least 4 months leading up to this trip I had a pretty good plan of what river/creek we would be fishing each day, but like all good fishing plans there would be a lot of changes. Leading up to the trip I kept a good eye on the weather in the area. It had been 90+ degrees every day for three weeks…not good. They also hadn’t received any rain and were in a mini drought…also not good. From previous experience, I knew this river system had some very difficult portages due to low water even when the river gauges showed them at their normal stages this time of year. So, in a mini drought, the once handful of difficult portages would quickly become more of a wading while dragging your kayak type of fishing trip….once again not good. We got down to the area late in the afternoon on Sunday and we decided we had to get a line wet even if it was for only an hour…the unpacking could wait.

  We were staying about a 45 minute drive from the rivers we planned to fish, so we would have to find another option. When we checked into our accommodations I noticed there were 10+ lakes/ponds within a 10-15 minute drive from where we were staying. These waters were not even on our radar to fish before arriving…just something to wet our appetite for things to come. We headed over to the biggest lake to see if it would be worth taking out the kayaks. Once there we walked out on a boat dock near a small marina and saw a ton of massive bluegill. These were some serious slabs…bigger than any bluegill I had ever caught. When walking out a bit farther my buddy Matt yelled out for me to take a look at a fish he had just seen. I headed his way and saw this massive shadow of a fish slowly gliding in and out from under the dock. The shadow was at least 3 ½ to four foot long! After seeing it up close it was a massive blue catfish…the biggest catfish I had ever seen in the flesh. Then one by one more of these catfish started gliding over toward us….soon there were 5 or 6 of these things swirling around in the water below us….which was only 3 foot deep and crystal clear! My buddy was ready to dart back to the truck and unleash the kayaks. Before we did I headed into the marina to see if they had any kind of live bait that would induce a kayak ski ride after hooking into one of the giant cats. The first step in the door and I completely froze in my tracks….you would have thought I just walked right up to a grizzly bear. In my mind it was similar to that, but without the being mauled to death and all. I looked right into a bin that had a sign on it that read “Fish Food $1.00”. The bin of course was full of puppy chow or some other dog food that I am sure kids had the pleasure of buying and feeding those mammoth cats. Talk about disappointment. Anyway, I headed over to talk to one of the guys working there and he mentioned that they did have some nice sized bass in the lake with some over 5 lbs. Not the mammoth cat I wanted to hook into, but a 5+ lbs. fish is all I needed to hear.

  We decided that we were going to launch the yaks and since we only had about a half hour of daylight it was going to be a night excursion. With that said, Matt has a ton of fishing experience, but has never been in a kayak let alone fished from one. I knew this would be interesting since most first time kayakers have a lot of apprehension with just a paddle in their hand…now we are adding the whole fishing scenario and not to mention in complete darkness! I knew I would get some immediate amusement out of this. I took out the Wilderness Systems sit on top and Matt was going to be paddling one of the new Whitewater Warehouse demo boats, the Wilderness Systems Commander 120 (had to get a plug in for the shop). If you are unfamiliar with these boats they are both super stable and are impossible to flip unless you try (another plug). I gave his boat a slight nudge and he was off…the whole while his paddle about two foot above the water and parallel to it...no where near getting it wet. Talk about deer in the headlights look on his face (more on that later)….his paddle never hit the water and he slowly glided to the shore about 30 foot down the bank. Next I heard him say that he wasn’t too sure about this kayak fishing thing. I put my paddle in the water and showed him it was about 2 foot deep and quit being a %&#^* ! Slowly he started to get comfortable with both the boat and the fact that earlier in the day while buying our TN fishing licenses that I had talked him into buying a light to fit on his head. At the time he was absolutely sure a regular flashlight would work while in the kayak. I told him he would be sorry for not buying the headlamp, so he begrudgingly listened. At that moment I am sure he was more than happy about his new purchase and that he didn’t have to juggle around a paddle, rod and flashlight all at once…not that he would ever admit it.

We tied on some buzz-baits and on my second cast I get a really nice hit, but it didn’t take the whole bait and I missed it. Soon after, Matt gets our first fish and his first from a kayak. Approx. a 12”er…not anything too big, but it is always a blast to catch fish on a buzz-bait. Right after Matt landed his fish my buzz-bait gets tagged by a really nice fish that I land…a respectable 18” fish. Since Matt had enough things to juggle for his first time in a kayak, I wasn't about to give him the camera to take a picture of my superior fish.  I knew all too well as soon as I gave him the camera either his rod, paddle, or he would end up in the drink...or even worse my camera.        

We haven’t even been fishing 20 minutes and we have landed one really nice fish and one decent fish…our sights are high at this point. In the next couple hours we got a few strikes, but nothing landed. We did however paddle next to a certain wooded area that had a ton of deer on the mountainside. When looking up at them from the kayak with the headlamps you just saw about 20 glowing eyes staring down at you…pretty cool and a little eerie at the same time. But you know when I am talking about deer in a fishing trip report the fishing has slacked off. We finally called it a night at about 10pm….at least we got a taste of what was to come for the rest of the trip…or so we hoped!

 ~Neil