Arrowhead - Round 2

Wheeler Lake - Tennessee River @ Mooresville/Arrowhead Landing

Time: 7 AM - 4 PMAir Temperature: 41 - 54 degrees during trip
Water Temperature: 54 degrees
Lake Level: 551.63' ~ 60,290 cfps
Weather Conditions: Light winds, 2-4 mph SSE.


Based on how successful my 1st trip to Arrowhead was, I headed back down today for some crappie action.


I fished much the same way as I did last trip, except based on what I had learned, I didn't waste any time exploring and headed straight down to the mouth of the channel around the deeper water where I had had good success last trip. The water was about 2 feet lower, so the deeper water was a must.


I fished the same as last time with minnows under a cork in the blow downs. I immediately started pulling in the fish. I concentrated most of my day fishing the same 2 or 3 blow downs with solid success. I played a bit with vertical jigging and pulled in a few, but minnows were definitely the name of the game.


It was another solid day. I ended the day with 33 crappie (16 keepers) and 26 assorted bluegill, etc.

Shallow Water Winter Crappie

Wheeler Lake - Tennessee River @ Mooresville/Arrowhead Landing

Time: 7 AM - 4 PMAir Temperature: 37 - 64 degrees during trip
Water Temperature: 54 degrees
Lake Level: 553.08' ~ 76,000 cfps
Weather Conditions: Moderate to Strong Winds, 5-16 mph SSE. Would have been difficult to fish had I been anywhere else.


Today I changed things up a bit and fished Wheeler for winter crappie. Based on a recommendation, I tried somewhere new today and launched at Arrowhead in Mooresville and fished the Arrowhead Slough. I'm glad I did.


It took me a little while to hone in on how to fish this area. It is basically expansive mud flats along the refuge with a narrow deep slough running right down the center. Reminds me of the Big Sandy River back home. Along the sides of the slough are numerous blown down tree tops extending outwards into the slough.


The day started off slowly as I tried various water depths along the slough. As the day warmed and I worked my way into deeper water, the action heated up. I finally found the crappie in a tree top extending out to about 10-12 FOW. I began working a minnow and cork in the 4-10 FOW depth fishing about 3-6 feet deep. BINGO.


These fish were HUNGRY! I immediately began getting hits and lots of action. I caught several but struggle with the hook set. These fish were con artists and stole almost every minnow I threw at them.


Over time, I managed to put several in the boat and caught several nice bluegill as well. I moved on down to another big tree top and got even better results. I played a bit with vertical jigging to try to discourage bait stealing and picked up a few that way. Not as effective as minnows, but still put a few fish in the boat.


The overall size of the crappie were pretty small. Possible that I wasn't fishing deep enough to catch bigger fish, but fishing any deeper with the wind would have been tough with jigging and corks. I pulled in a herring and realized a school of them had moved in so I took the opportunity to change over to a casting road runner type of jig and caught 12 herring. I kept these for future catfish bait. Never pass up an opportunity for catfish bait!


At the end of the day, I exhausted 4 dozen minnows and had to resort to jigs for the last few fish. I ended the day with 49 total fish: 28 crappie with 15 keepers, 9 bluegill with 3 keepers, and the 12 herring. I caught all but about 3 fish from the same two tree tops. It was an awesome day and I'm definitely going back!

My first trip to the "Big G" was a "Big Zzzzz"

North and South Sauty - Scottsboro - Lake Guntersville

Time: 7 AM - 1:00 PMAir Temperature: 39 - 57 degrees during trip
Water Temperature: 58 degrees
Lake Level: 593.11' -
Weather Conditions: Moderate winds, 8-14 mph North. Cold.


Today was a repeat of what I intended to do on 11/13. I didn't write about that trip because no fishing every actually occurred... I'm not superstitious, but another Friday the 13th like that and I could be...To summarize: I was all excited to have a Friday off of work and go fishing. I'd never fished Guntersville before, and I wanted to check out the crappie action under the bridges. I made it on the water by 7:30AM and was motoring toward my destination when I stopped to trim my motor up to free the grass that had hung on the lower unit. That's when it all went downhill. I never got the motor trimmed down. I couldn't reach the manual trim bypass valve so I tried the fill valve and that didn't work. One hour later, I had trolled about 5 miles and exhausted all batteries as I reached the landing. I trailered the boat and got the motor down with the bypass valve. At this point, I now had water in my trim oil, so I drained some to see what the damage was. It was bad. I had to manually raise the motor and lock in in the up position for the drive home. Two miles down the road, the motor slipped down and drug across the pavement until I could get pulled over. The result: 3-4" of my skeg fin now gone. I spent the balance of my day draining, flushing, and filling my trim unit and tracking down a skeg guard to fix my issues. Then while heading to TN to get my skeg guard, my radio head unit quit. BAD. DAY.


However, no issues today. It was a Monday, so I was hoping for light boat traffic. When I got to North Sauty Bridge, it was packed. I tied up to the last remaining bridge pylon and gave it a go. It was absolutely packed with fishermen. I tried minnows under a cork and bouncing bottom, but it was slow. I pulled in 4 yellow/white bass and two crappie. One crappie was a keeper. The wind was whipping through the bridge and it was cold. No one was doing much good.


I left and headed to fish around a marina with no luck and headed to South Sauty to repeat what I had done earlier. No luck at all and it was also packed.


Probably the highlight of my trip was seeing how others had innovated ideas to fish under these bridges. Several people were using C-Clamps to attached to any point under the bridge. Others had cut boards that fit between the bridge spans and had attached eye-hooks and springs to their tie-off lines. Genius.


I called it a day and rode back. I saw 3 beautiful bald eagles on the way back. Very slow day and not what I was hoping for, but still enjoyed myself.