After the previous day (and what turned into the previous night) of paddling/fishing a couple of days of rest and relaxation turned into some hiking and scouting for future fishing trips. My first stop was a few different locations within the Big South Fork and its tributaries where I found some spectacular views (and some excellent looking honey holes for future trips!) After some scouting in that area I headed back over to a few spots within the Obed-Emory river system that I also wanted to check out for some future fishing trips.

  After a couple of days of scouting I was ready to head back out on the water and do some more fishing. Brett had to go back home to work and Matt headed over to Gatlinburg to vacation the rest of the week with his family, so my fishing was somewhat limited without a shuttle. I decided I would hit the ponds and lakes that we had fished the first day and see if I couldn’t hook into a nice largemouth (earlier in the week a married couple who turned out to be from Dayton and retired down there told us about someone catching a 6-7 lb’er from one of the lakes….Game On!) So I headed down to one of the lakes in the hopes that I could catch at least one really big fish (I would also take 4 or 5 really big fish…just sayin’!).

  So, I'm all ready to launch and catch a big fish when no sooner I step in the water and see a 3 ft. copperhead swimming from shore right next to me. The bass can wait…I immediately got out of the water and waited for him to move on. I wanted no part of him or an emergency room from a poisonous snake bite. Finally launched, I started casting a black spinner-bait and within 20 min’s I caught a monster. The first fish right out of the gate was a 22” largemouth….the fish I had been looking for. Then not 15 minutes later I caught another largemouth on the same spinner-bait…this one a 19”er. Then it slowed down a bit, so I changed lures and tied on a floating rapala stick bait. Working it in a sort of walk the dog fashion I caught a few more smaller fish in the 12” range. With no big fish caught for a while it was near dusk and time to tie on a buzz-bait. I had scouted a nice bank that had dry creek bed running into the lake earlier in the day. Where the dry creek bed entered the lake it created a narrow channel that was about 4 foot deep at the deepest with some 2 foot deep water on either edge. I figured it would be a perfect spot to catch some bass starting to feed in the shallows. I paddled over there and threw a buzz-bait toward the bank and ran it right through the heart of the channel and instantly a bass tagged it! I ended up catching to more out of that spot everyone being 17” or more. I was finally catching the fish I wanted to catch all week long. I just want to send out a warning to those 18”+ smallies and that big musky in the rivers I fished earlier in the week…I will be back next year and if the weather cooperates you are getting your picture taken! (I just hope it’s with me holding them up)

~Neil