Tims Ford 6-8-2012

No trauma today. No tire blowouts, no fog, just a great looking day on beautiful Tims Ford in Middle Tennessee. Unfortunately Jack and I mistimed our trip from Franklin to Tims. We got there about 30 minutes after the sun was up and Tims is an early morning lake this time of the year.

We had only been on the lake about 10 minutes when Jack got a tremendous strike on a Pop R. After a great fight he landed a bass just a couple of ounces shy of 4 and half pounds of largemouth. The fish seemed long enough to be 6 pounds but I suppose was spawned out. Oddly, the fish seemed to be somewhat snub nosed not that I have ever heard of a snub nosed bass.

After this fish the catching slowed down. It is about now that we regretted  not being on the lake about 45 minutes earlier. After a bit Jack caught a smallie about 12 inches on the Pop R. I finally got a little fish smell on my hands with a fighting largemouth about 9 inches long on a plastic bait. At least I am not skunked.

We continued to fish hard for fish. Jack lost a couple of nice fish, at least with nice topwater strikes, but they came unhooked. Still can't figure out how a bass comes undone on a bait with multiple treble hooks.

We finally moved to another location hoping to find a bite. I finally did hook into a nice smallie on Bitsy Bug jig. Great, hard fight but oddly, no jumps. This one weighed in a couple of ounces shy of 3 lbs. Man, I could use a steady diet of 3 lb smalls. A short time later Jack hooked up with a nice fish on a crank bait. As he got near the boat we realized it was a nice fish in the 3 lb class, with a dark back. We thought small mouth. Then Jack, who is from up north of the Mason Dixon line realized it was a very nice walleye. Unfortunately his net man (me) didn't react quick enough and the "eye" disconnected from the treble hook somehow and dropped away into the depths. Back in this same pocket we observed a unique phenomenon. There were dozens of 2 feet long gars cruising near the surface of the water. They were all over this cove.

By now the sun is high in the sky, temp is rising and our confidence in finding bites here on Tims was lagging not to mention the tubers, jet skis and pontoon boats were proliferating. We did try fishing a long gravel bar that dropped off into deep water with Carolina rigs but no bites. So around 2 pm, we put the boat on the trailer. A great finish was having a double dip cone of Butter Pecan ice-cream in the State Park concession stand.

We certainly did not have a good day with quantity, only 4 in the boat but with Jack's 4.5 and my 3 lb smallie it was a very good day on the water. Can't wait til the next time.