The Spoonpluggers Forum

Good one Highlanders and Canyon lakes!

Me being a natural lake guy, I never got to see much of that. My first indication of something similar was at Pickwick. Pickwick is more like a river than a Reservoir just because it's not very wide compared to the other sections of the Tennessee river like you would see at Kentucky Lake or Lake Chicamauga. The size of those places would scare the pants off of a new spoonplugger or a guy that never ventured from the small natural lakes. Across from where we stayed at the campground was two rock walls and in front of those rock walls it dropped straight off. You would be jam up against the wall if you trolled the first four size lures, maybe more. In between those two walls was a flatter patch of green grass. Directly in front of that area was a nice bar. Bingo!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It really didn't sink in at first because my lack of experience had not taught me yet to observe the shoreline terrain so I could have an idea what might be under the water.
Not far from that spot, Deb and I got into a school of 4 pound smallmouth while everyone at the outing was up eating supper. Back then, there was no quit in me. Again, we were trolling a rock wall and was right up against the bank and then it started turning away and led me right out in the middle of the river where we contacted a 4 pound smallmouth. I had no idea what I was doing because it was my first time in that area. Just lucky. I told Deb, lets do that again. We went back far enough to start a pass and when we got to that area , we got another one. Ended up with 5 that came out of the same mold. We had no idea what it was that we stumbled across but when I took a look at the shoreline on both sides, it looked like someone had cut all the trees down and you could look all the way up into the woods. We showed the fish to Frank Hamill and later he asked me where we caught them. When I had explained to him where, he asked me if I knew what was there. I had no clue. It was a road bed and Frank said that the wagon trains used to cross the river in that spot before they flooded it because it was the shallowest spot. If I knew to just look at the bank, maybe we could have asked why the area had no trees and maybe knew that it was an indication of a road crossing the river. We were pretty green back then but what a great learning experience. I cannot begin to tell you how much can be learned by fishing all types of waters. It really opens up a persons mind when you have to think. John