Fall, Fog, and Fish

If you were anywhere near the waterways in East Tennessee this past Saturday you probably encountered two of Mother Nature’s many changing moods. First off is obviously FALL.
This Hickory Tree on the way home from the lake was photographed by two separate leaf peepers just while I was stopped to admire it’s beauty. I took my wife back the next day just to get a good picture and another reminder of what it means to live in this awesome part of the country. However, on my way to the lake and while I was on the lake fishing I was enveloped by a thick blanket of FOG. Oh my goodness it was bad! I took my 16’ flatbottom boat and did have GPS on the rear depth finder but no way was this old boy going to venture out on the main lake in that pea soup. There were about 10 other trailers there when I launched and I could not see or hear a soul. I don’t know where those other cats were but I immediately dropped trolling motor and started casting top water lures for a silly green carp. Those guys are so easily fooled!! Visibility did not improve much for the next 3 hours and around 11am I ventured out to the main lake and snapped this picture, still socked in pretty good.
?I stayed hugged up to the shore until it lifted then got serious about some fall Crappie fishing. The water temperature was around 64 degrees and I soon realized why I have never fished much in the Fall. Our local lakes fluctuate almost 30 feet during a calendar year and all of my favorite structure/ fishing holes were pretty much high and dry. If they were in my favorite brush piles Saturday I could have beached the boat and picked em!! I noticed a few boats long lining and spider rigging so I found me a decent looking stretch of river channel that had some scattered rocks and humps and started looking at the electronics. There were scattered Shad balls on the surface and a few birds working the area so I started pulling some jigs. Nothing. I turned back into a long creek and noticed some good looking rocky points that fell off into the channel. Why not cast a single jig to these areas, it was after lunch and my livewell was dry. Thump...FISH on! The first area produced 4 keepers and a couple shorts and the next area had 7 good keepers suspended in about 14ft of water. It ended as quickly as it started and I soon learned Fall lesson number 1, it is either Feast or Famine. I fished several other areas the rest of the afternoon and had no other bites. I got home with 11 riders,
?a mixed bag of Blacks and Whites. Nothing huge, 10-13 inches but fat and thick.
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?Will they be there next weekend, probably not, but I did have fun finding them this past weekend and enjoying the beautiful palette of color Mother Nature put before me.


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