Smallies, Gills, and a PB

Mother’s Day weekend 2021 set up to be the Perfect Storm for my style of fishing in E. TN. With my mother out of town visiting family and my wife helping our daughter in VA with a yard sale, I was left unattended at the house with a boat and truck, both full of gas, and some fun fishing equipment. Friday….gale force winds, let’s just eat some Asian food and enjoy the peace and quiet after a long week of work.
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Hear that….it’s NOT the TV on, just some crickets whining about not getting out enough, well hold on boys it’s about to get real. Saturday morning was typical yard chores and my reason for not making the trip to VA, a spot behind the weigh table at a local tournament trail. Being the bump man I handle a lot of nice bass, Green, Brown, and Spotted. This weekend proved to showcase what a wonderful Smallmouth fishery my local lake is, with multiple 5 fish bags of 3lb Brownies weighed.
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Hungry they were after the spawn, I just had to get the boat out and chase such a beautiful fish with some light tackle and a loose drag. Knowing the Gills were still doing the prep work for perpetuating their numbers, a combination trip was planned.
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Well it didn’t take long to replicate what the bass boys were doing, just on a more fun and less serious scale. My first 8 fish were Brown, and I looked around once to make sure I wasn’t in the the middle of a Trout Magnet Man video with all the drag squealing, fire shooting and high flying deep digging jokers. The bait of choice was the Nikko Pinworm in green, and the rod was a 6ft Area Trout rod with the action of a willow branch but enough backbone to bring most victims to the net. Spooled with 3lb braid the diameter of a human hair….luck has to be on your side for these guys.
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Best Smallie of the day scared the 16in mark, but all (11 total) lived to tell about it another day. As fun as these fish are, I left them biting in search another drag pulling sideways running adversary.
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A little deeper but still getting their groove on were the big boy Gills. They too liked the green Nikko Pinworm, tipped with a nibble I collected a nice mess for the freezer and sore lipped a lot more than I took home.
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Size was good, girth excellent, and fun factor on the Majorcraft Finetail was off the charts.
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A few crappie were still up shallow, due to the water temps dropping back into the 60s. With a personal boat limit of 10 riders, I went in search of some new spots and found an area that proved hold some absolute giants. I don’t have Side imaging, I don’t have Livescope, I have the best bluegill search bait known….a cricket. They wanted out, well they did their job, under a float and split shot on some 3lb Varivas nylon line, I located a spawning area that yielded my lake PB of 9.5in.
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This old boy been around the block a few times and sired a many babies I am sure. For public waters, my lake is 30 miles long, indeed an excellent specimen. Now I grew up fishing Santee Cooper, Murray, Clarks Hill, Greenwood lakes in SC in the 70s where monster Panfish teemed, 10in Gills, 12 in ShellCracker and 2 pound Crappie were the norm, not the exception. A great weekend it was with some fun equipment catching some great fish. Happy Mother’s Day to all.


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