Spring Fling

Spring is slowly showing its influence around here. As things start to green up, waters warm and area lakes are brought up to summer pool, a parade of boats can be seen headed to lakes everywhere. Cabin fever is being broken after a miserable winter, fish are being caught, turkey and spring squirrel seasons are getting close. The time leaves are getting to the size of quarters on most of the trees is what we want. Early bloomers are past their peak, the dulcet sounds of the lawn mower drones across neighborhoods as they come out of hibernation to begin grazing on young shoots to ready themselves for their next winter sleep. Blue haired flower planters, another warm weather creature emerges, it can be observed head down rump up, toiling away in their spring rituals of cleaning plant beds and renewal of gardens. This is my signal to hitch up the boat, grab a couple of 6 ½ foot spinning rods and head to the river.

Yet again, I head off in a direction most people never go and to be honest many fishermen in our area have never heard of. The sexy species are active, crappie are going nuts, bass are hitting, even lowly catfish are being loaded into boats but I head down to Cheatham Dam just outside of Ashland City to catch white bass, stripe in this neck of the woods. A fish available all year but spring, summer and into fall brings on a bite hard to pass up. Downstream from Cheatham Dam or upstream from Clarksville, this stretch of river is a stripe hunter’s playground.

Spring is spawning season for stripe and first to arrive are smaller males followed by large egg laden females. On local rivers huge numbers congregate below dams, at the mouth of feeder creeks and along banks special only to them. The last two are where I head. I know if I sit upstream near the dam I can catch fish all day, so does everyone else fishing here which works to my advantage since they won’t go hunting fish. Years ago I was shown spots downstream where fish stack up in huge schools along unremarkable banks or in eddies formed by creeks feeding the Cumberland. Another good part is the simple tackle used to catch fish till your arms hurt. A ¼ oz plain lead jig head and a 3-4” soft plastic twister tail in white is cast into the current attached to a spinning rod loaded with 10# test. If you want to get fancy a #7 Countdown Rapala in shad is added to your baits or maybe a small Little George.

Running downstream from Cheatham river banks rise on both sides in plain dirt walls with a few tree lined creeks coming in from farm fields creating eddies fish hold in. The tricks are simple, slow your boat out in the current then bring it in quietly toward the eddy at a creek mouth trying to hold in the current to get casts into the slower water. Water from Cheatham’s turbines will push your boat out of position but a few casts along the downstream edge of the current break will bring results. After casting let your jig fall a few feet then simply start reeling without any added action. The strikes are savage no need to wonder if it was a fish. The other way is to find which banks hold fish, drift with the current while casting close to the bank to locate a school. Once you find them you can drift past a spot then circle back upstream to repeat the process. If a fish comes off keep reeling in a steady manner, chances are good you will have another strike almost instantly from fish following your’s.

I put in at the ramp by the dam. I hate this ramp, it looks like a cow’s face. Steep is being nice about it. Everything was loaded, rods rigged, lunch in the cooler, it was time to fish. Heading downstream, warm spring air keeping me company, sun finally out, no boat traffic to disturb the river and fish waiting to be caught, I‘ve been waiting months on this. Years of fishing makes it easier to disregard banks that look like fish would use them but don’t and I pass several to get to a good one a few minutes away. I drop my trolling motor in, grab a rod and start casting while spinning the bow back upstream.

The spot isn’t anything special, just a high dirt bank slowly sliding into the current with a few stumps here and there but stripe always hold here. My first drift ends with no hits, I head back to the top of the run and start again, it takes a few drifts to find how deep the fish are holding. This spot gives up 4 or 5 nice fish close to 2 pounds each. I drift down to get far enough away so the motor won’t spook the school, I’ll hit it again on the way back, start up and angle across the river to get to a small creek.

It isn’t much as creeks go, maybe 15 feet across with a small eddy, I catch fish here almost every trip, I am hoping for big females. Around cast number 3 I get my wish as one loads up bending my rod double, taking some line even. Stripe like to turn sideways or go nose down which makes big ones a hand full in current. I get her into the live well, my first 3 pounder, then catch 4 more good fish in 4 casts, this is what I hoped for. Fish are here in numbers when even a small spot gives up this many this fast without a bunch of them being little males. I let the boat drift down in the heavy current to get to my next bank just a few hundred yards downstream. Now it get easier because I know how far to let my jig fall and how fast to retrieve.

The rest of the day goes pretty much the same. Hit a spot for a few drifts, taking fish all along the way with an occasional bonus of a sauger near creek mouths where some stragglers are holding. On days like this when the good fish are here there isn’t much like it. Every few casts gets you a rod popping strike from a big stripe. I have a bunch come off during the fight only to hook another within a foot or two. My live well is filling up, exposed skin is turning red under spring sun, shoulders, arms and wrists finally give up after hours of nonstop casting and hauling in big stripe. Time to point the boat upstream and head home.

We have made this trip for many years, since I was a kid in fact. I learned to fish this stretch of river from Don McIntyre, yep Don taught me a lot about fishing (see last post). I took my Dad there years ago and taught him about the stripe. It was the only place he ever fished and quit because his arms hurt too bad to keep going. Strings of 80-100 big fish were nothing back when we kept those numbers, these days we keep less but catch just as many with sizes as big as ever.

The Cumberland is a big river, you need a boat to fish it, smaller rivers where you can stand on the bank produce big numbers of stripe, too. The Stones River near Murfreesboro or some larger creeks feeding into Percy Priest lake have great stripe runs in the spring as does Mansker Creek below Old Hickory Dam and the banks below the dam itself. There are spots like this all over, most are under fished when it comes to stripe even though they are abundant and easy to catch.

It is getting close, time to check rivers and creeks, tie on a few jigs and catch some of the hardest fighting fish around. Big numbers, good fish, simple tackle, all things that make spring fishing so great.

Overlooked, River Silver

I grew up in Nashville, actually , East Nashville, which let me have access to some of the large TVA lakes and dams that dot the state. Just outside of Nashville is Old Hickory and Percy Priest, both have been favorite stomping grounds since we were kids. Priest is a draw down impoundment, turbines below the dam only run a few weeks a year to pull the lake down to winter pool or if we have a lot of rain, enough to hold the level. Old Hickory is different, it runs 24 hours a day, providing electrical energy to the grid, the more power needed the more of it’s twelve turbines they run. This provides good fishing on both sides of the river just about whenever you feel the need to head that way. Rockfish (stripers), hybrids, catfish, sauger and a list of panfish are caught below the dam either from boats or the two catwalks, one on either side, built for fishermen.

Percy Preist in the summer. You might call this limited fishing opportunities.


I loaded up the boat to try for rockfish and cats one warm Saturday afternoon during mid summer. No wind and a partly cloudy sky promised a good evening on the river. I got to the ramp at Old Hickory, which I hate, it is extremely steep, long and narrow, got the boat launched, then headed upstream to the dam. The turbines are on the left side going upstream with flood gates in the center and the lock on the right. Underwater downstream of the flood gates are large rock piles that hold fish but steal terminal tackle at an astounding rate. There is a good current break where the turbines meet the flood gates, this break flows down the edge of these rock piles at mid river, this is where rockfish and cats cruise.

Gary Hanson with a nice rockfish from Alabama. One of the fish we were after. Photo credit: Gary Hanson

I was at the far end of the turbines. This view is from the fishermens' catwalk.


I pulled up to the face of the dam where the current break begins, we rigged heavy jigs and started casting into water flowing fast from the turbines. This provided good exercise but no strikes so I started wondering what I needed to change. I was tied to the corner of the dam in an eddy and noticed something running shad along the front of the flood gates in the slack current. Stripe (white bass) do this all the time and I sure don’t mind catching them, I’ve caught big stripe in this spot, so my decision was made.

I rigged a 6 ½ foot spinning rod with a #7 Countdown Rapala, another with a white ¼ oz Roostertail and started casting where I could see strikes. It only took a couple of casts for the rod to bend to the handle and a fight to start. After a few seconds a silver rocket came out of the river, back arched, mouth open, twisting and throwing spray. My fishing partner throws into the same spot and gets the same results, now two skipjacks are putting on a show like miniature tarpon, at times several feet in the air. Landing a 2 pound skipjack, I smiled, forgot about what I had come to the river to catch, made another cast and held on.

Tennessee tarpon. Great fighters and almost completely overlooked.


Skipjack are called Tennessee tarpon around here and have earned their name. Besides being some of the best live or dead bait, they are an absolute blast to catch. Every evening during warmer weather they move along the dam and riprap assaulting baitfish. This particular evening they were moving, along with schools of stripe, against the dam face keeping shad pushed to the surface. All along the walls shad were jumping out of the water trying to shake the predators. All I needed to do was follow along with my trolling motor, casting past the splashes, then retrieving through the school. Very few casts went without a strike.

We had hit after hit from stripe and skips, spinning rods bent, reels screaming from the strain as good fish stripped line. We followed schools along concrete surfaces watching shad as they flew out of the river, onto the sloped face, flopping as they went from frying pan to fire. We weren’t the only ones that knew about this evening ritual, black crowned night herons and great blue herons, stood along the water’s edge waiting for shad to appear. They happily speared a shad supper they didn’t have to work for. The action continued, larger fish began showing up as light levels dropped. As bigger fish came in they got more aggressive, several times we had two large skipjack on one bait, straining the poor light rods and eight pound test we were using.

As dusk set in the action slowed, so under the sodium lights illuminating the river from the dam, we rigged up for catfish with a fresh stock of bait. With a live well full of stripe, any cats would be bonus fish. Darkness came and we drifted the current break with a breeze created by water from under the dam rushing by cooling us and keeping the skeeters at bay. We did manage to catch a couple of good cats that night, one blue going about 8 pounds, before packing it in. If we hadn’t seen a cat that night it wouldn’t have mattered, stripe and skipjack had given us a great time.

When I lived close enough to run out in the afternoons many times I went just for the skipjack. I would fish the lock side of the river since it has less current, waiting for the schools to start running the banks late in the day. I use several baits to catch skips, jig and twister combos, Roostertails, #7 Countdowns, anything 1 ½ to 2 inches in length mimicking a shad works. 6 ½ to 7 ½ foot spinning rods with 8 to 10 pound test is all you need. These are fish that so many people never fish for and I love to catch, they are incredible fighters and provide bait for my catfishing trips.

Skipjacks are simply one of the best baits for cats and stripers, either live, cut into chunks or whole, they are great and free. I get as many as I can and freeze them, guts in one bag and fillets in another for later use. Most people use a cast net and it works like a champ. There are several guys from Viet Nam and Laos I’ve met that net big numbers of skips and big gizzard shad to eat. They cut the bellies out leaving a really nice fish which they stack into boxes, the bellies and innards go into a bucket. They will gladly give you the insides which saves me time on those days if I just want to catfish and they are at the river.

Keeping with my theme of having fun outdoors, not making it work like tournament fishing or big time deer management, I have no problem fishing for species most people turn their nose up to if you mention fishing for them. I am out to enjoy whatever time I get plus I need skipjack to help fill my freezer and those of needy families I bring food during the year. In many areas skipjack are plentiful, almost completely overlooked, great bait and better fighters. Do I even need to say it?

Go out and give these guys a try. What a fun way to spend a summer afternoon, rod bent double, drag screaming, silver in the air throwing spray and a smile on your face.