Time: 8:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Air Temperature: 86 Degrees Hot!!
Water Temperature: 81-85 Degrees
Lake Level: 554.7' - A little more than a foot low.
Weather Conditions: Started calm, choppy by the early afternoon.
Fished with Doug and Douglas Ainsworth for catfish today. Launched by my house this morning. Immediately noticed water had dropped. TVA was pulling water out in preparation of rising waters from all the recent rain from the tropical storm.
We launched some jugs over on the flats off the point of Mallard creek in 13-14 feet of water. The idea was to catch the cats on their journey leaving the shallows from their overnight feeding and heading to the channel. Then we headed over to the nuclear plant. I had fears that we might be dealing with some strong current and that ended up being the case. I've never seen current so strong in Wheeler Lake. We had a really tough time keeping in the sweet spot and keeping our line vertical. We gave it a shot of a couple hours, then decided it wasn't worth the struggle. Doug did catch one blue cat while bouncing bottom. We had several other good bites, but just could stay on them in the current. We were using shrimp and cut shad as bait. We did notice the catfish guide boats appeared to be heading in early. I think they were struggling, too.
We decided to run the jugs and regroup with a new plan. Jugs ended up producing well! We caught 5 fish off the first float with one being a whopper. I'd estimate it to weigh in around 20 lbs. With the success on the first float, we reset the jugs and tied up a couple more and let them soak for another hour. We ran them the 2nd time around 1:00. We only caught one on the 2nd float, so it appeared the fish had made their move, so we called it a day.
Ended up keeping 7 cats. They dressed to almost 8 lbs of finished fillets. Looking forward to doing it again!
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