Crappie fishing with my hero

My fishing hero, Richard Simms, didn’t have enough to do as owner and guide of Scenic City Fishing of Chattanooga, so he accepted a new job as editor of the CrappieNow online monthly magazine, and wanted to gather a little info for upcoming issues and somehow thought that I might give him a little something to write about.

So I met up with Richard at the Wolftever creek ramp before daylight and we set sail across the Harrison Bay Area to the main river that I like to fish this time of year. I ran to a local bluff area, put The trolling motor down and eased into position without spooking the fish.

There was a major willow fly hatch going on and fish were very active up high in the water column. Right on cue on the first or second cast, a nice 12” Black crappie inhaled my Green Hornet Slab Slayer on a 4 count and the game was on. We stayed on the bluff for a few minutes, long enough to land 7 keepers and a couple of shorts before moving on to different types of structures to fish.

i knew that Richard was wanting to gather info as much as catch crappie, so I took him to several places. We finished the morning on a dock so that he could get some pics and video. We caught 8 keepers on that dock and it was the last spot that we hit before calling it a short morning. 3.5 hours of fishing and pics.

Richard guides mainly for crappie during the pre and spawning months of March through mid April when he goes back to guiding for Smallmouth bass and Blue Catfish below Chickamauga dam.

Today, he caught all the trash fish. Lolol. A Smallmouth bass over 2 lbs, a Largemouth bass over 3 lbs, and a Flathead Catfish that was 10.5 lbs, all on 4 lb test line. I had fun netting these fish for him. He out did me on the dock shooting for crappie, but I got him on bluff and off shore crappie.

We had 18 keeper crappie and a few shorts, all released and I measured one or two crappie at 12.5” and 12.25”. Water temp 77.9 and 13,900 cfs. Thank you Richard for going with the old guy today. I’ll be looking for the info on CrappieNow in August or whenever it comes out.