Thread: Watts Bar report Apr 25-27th

We were down this past weekend. Ended up cleaning 21 before heading home Sunday morning. Fishing was rough to say the least. My theory is the abundance of shad. I've been down at Watts the past several years and have never seen that much shad in my life. The docks seemed to be boiling in the mornings and everywhere we went they were exploding out of the water. Again, just my theory to the difficult fishing. I had more luck throwing a minnow and float then anything else, although monkey milk (or some variation of it) seemed to be the jig color of choice that brought success. Every female was full of eggs and the sacks were firm. Caught a couple males this weekend, one with a tail bloody from beating a nest and one with a tail that looked like it was on the mend. I cleaned one Sunday morning in flurry and grabbed what i thought was a female judging by the belly only to be blown away by the abundance of shad in the gut. Weather was great on Friday, scattered storms on Saturday and beautiful weather Sunday morning. We've had better years and we've had worse years. It's always going to be a return trip for us. Love the lake because of views like the one above.

Originally Posted by Abu65

Did you net any shad to fish with? I've do it all the time with catfish and often thought I should with crappie.

I never have. Probably should have!