Old Hickory 8-2-2013

Old Hickory 8-2-2013

Today I am celebrating my 55th anniversary with my wife, Jo Anne, by accepting Jack's invitation to fish on Old Hickory. Hey, my trolling motor is still in the shop. You go when you can. We will celebrate this evening with BLTs.  

Jack picked me up at 4:30 am and made a quick stop at Hardee's for a breakfast sandwich. Yep, they open at 4:30.  A 55 minute drive put us at the Davis Corner ramp in Spencer Creek. A pretty heavy fog bank greeted us. We idled about 100 yards and dropped the trolling motor.  We threw top waters for a while. The only thing to come into the boat was a very confused bream who mistook the topwater prop bait for a playful friend.  We fished around the point and into Ron's, Duke's, Bill's cove but no bass came to the topwater party. We reversed directions and retraced our trail with different baits. Jack scored first with our first and best bass of the day, a sassy, aerial 3 lb'er. Jack once again showed his ability with the jig.

I followed shortly with a 2 lb'er on the ubiquitous Smoking Blue Finesse Worm, my best of the day.

We began to move around a bit but slowly because the fog still covered the whole bay. We were fishing the bank when we heard the slurping, splashing sound of a school of fish herding shad to the surface and feeding greedily. They were just out of casting range but they suckered us into chasing the school. Finally picked up a couple of nice white bass. The school moved away so we went back to pounding shoreline. Jack lost a nice bass on a crank bait. I picked up a couple of bass on a worm but none more than 14". Finally got a call from the trolling motor shop. Mike said he had checked 6 times but he could NOT make it not run. This was good news/bad news. It meant the problem is on my boat electrical system. Except for having to spend $1300, I was kinda hoping to get a new one. He said the motor did have a broken speed control switch which he will replace. I can pick the motor up any time, probably Monday.

It was time to move out to the river. We tried the ledge at the opening of Spencer Creek to the river channel. High hopes dashed. No bites. Next stop, the steam plant outlet channel to bounce a jig on the gravel bank. This is usually good for a fish or two. A couple of bumps was the extent. To the power lines backwater! We finally picked up a couple of  bass here on the crank bait (square bill). Headed back to Spencer to finish up about 1:00 pm. Our take for the day was 1 bream, 2 white bass and 8 bass. Jack's 3 lb'er was the best. This was an enjoyable day with a great friend.