DK Style on Tellico

Since we had a good weekend forecast and hadn’t had so much precipitation to muddy up the lake, I decided it was time to make a run. I put new line on my poles, siphoned out the old gas out of my boat, and refueled. Now, off to the lake.

I started Saturday morning running some planar boards. However, after one pass with no luck, I realized it wasn’t yet time for the boards. So, I headed to another area where there are many brush piles. I really wanted to single pole fish as DK had showed me last August, but I knew if I cast into the brush piles (mostly fallen trees), I would just end up losing all of my valuable Curtis Hobbs jigs. So, I went to the end of the old creek bottom and starting scouting for some sort of other structure just as DK has said on many posts here. Soon, I came upon the group of fish in the first photo below. These fish were hanging a bit before the fallen tree, so I got excited that I could actually fish them without losing a jig on every cast (note- the fallen tree in the image is real nasty – I’ve lost many flies in it when float, fly, and minnow fishing). Unfortunately, these fish didn’t want to play. I kept moving up and came across the fish in the second photo. You can see these fish were clustered around some stick-ups at the edge of the old creek bed. So, I casted out, started counting until the jig hit the bottom, gave a little twitch, reeled in two rounds, paused, gave another twitch, and so on. On one of my first few casts, I caught the little guy in the third picture below while reeling in. I kept on fishing trying to keep my eye on my line. On one of my casts, I saw the line twitch when I wasn’t doing anything, and I set the hook. Sure enough, it was a fish and was the nice fellow in the fourth pic below. Notice the size of his mouth. This fish was 12 in, which is really great in my opinion for Tellico. On another cast, I saw my line wasn’t sinking as it should. I set the hook and indeed it was a little fish, but a fish none the less. Overall, I caught 3 keepers and six shorts fishing in this manner. All were released.


Reflecting on my performance Saturday night, I realized that a portion of my time was fighting the boat. The wind wasn’t much, but I did have to deal with the trolling motor as I don’t have spot lock. So, after church on Sunday, I stopped by Walmart and purchased a poor-man’s spot lock mechanism (i.e. an anchor and a rope!) I went back to the lake after lunch and tried again. The last pictures are of fish I found along the creek bed. This time, I ended up with 7 keepers, ~5 shorts, and a small back ache from pulling up the anchor many times as I moved around. I gave the fish to a couple who were fishing nearby with floats and minnows. They had 5 keepers, so mine helped them make a decent mess. Anyway, on one cast on Sunday, I saw my line sink faster than it should, and again, I set the hood and it was a fish.
Those three fish are the only ones where I noticed something change with my line. I caught the other fish as I reeled in or during a twitch (i.e. I felt more tension in the line). Again, I’m just happy that I was able to catch some fish using the DK single pole method on Tellico. I still have much to learn and improve, but I enjoyed it. I’m sure if I had DK by my side, he could have caught both our limits. The weather was beautiful.

I caught all the fish on either 1/16 or 3/32 jig heads. The color of the jig didn’t seem to matter. I think BG minnow minder, Cicada, did the best for the grubs. I also used BG baby shads in a few different colors. Water was 46F and stained as shown in the photos. As shown, the fish were in 12 – 18 FOW.