"Oh sorry, I was gone there for a minute."
Which I was... I was ten years old sitting in my grandparents front yard eating blackberries while Mamaw was breaking green beans up for supper. Nearly a daily occurrence for me back then. We lived next door to their farm and I'd spend every day alone exploring the woods or sailing toy boats on the pond or any one of a thousand things ten year old boys do in the middle of endless summer. But as evening started to cool I knew I could find one or both my grandparents sitting out in the yard. I'd get a drink out of the tin ladle that hung by the well pump and settle in to visit and snack on whatever was in season, mulberries, grapes, strawberries, blackberries, peaches.
I've been lost daydreaming back in time a lot lately, a sure sign things were a bit too much right now in the present. Aging parents on both sides of the family, relatives staying over, too much time in waiting rooms and doctor offices. I've always tended to be a recluse and too much time with anyone, even those I care the most about and my nerves start to fray.
But at least I could see it coming and before things got too out of hand a couple weeks ago I'd rented a car for this coming weekend and blocked out enough time to drive to Tennessee and fish for forty eight hours straight. Alone. The passenger seat full of rods, the back seat holding a cooler and my pack. Hopefully leaving no room for worries, unease, and trouble. Sometimes there isn't much better you can do for your soul than to just leave with only the vaguest idea that it's time to go fishing.
When I was in my teens my dad owned a big pontoon boat and we would spend weeks on it every year below Meldahl Dam on the Ohio River. Back when men were men and you were allowed to venture as close to the dam as your nerves allowed. And back then my dad had a lot of nerve. And then while in my twenties there was a white bass population explosion below Markland Dam. I was young and single and worked a rotating 12 hour shift which gave me seven days off out of every two weeks. Most of which I spent fishing and sleeping on the rock bar below Markland. Needless to say huge dams feel like home. Or at least like home away from home. Which explains how I ended up below one of the huge TVA dams. If the trip had any itinerary I guess it was to make a tour of several of these huge dams, casting for striped bass, wipers, anything that would bite really.
Whatever would bite ended up being mostly stripers and white bass. The striper bite started about an hour before dark and lasted on and off thru the night. Then right at daylight huge sections of the river would explode with what seemed like bricks being tossed into the water as stripers cut up schools of shad. Forty five minutes after daylight it was all over and dynamite wouldn't get you a striper till sunset. The first morning was unlike anything I've ever seen except for videos of ocean stripers off Montauk. There were literally several acres off big stripers smashing bait. I didn't get any video of that because the whole time I was fighting a huge striper, bigger than any I've ever caught. After a long fight it just pulled off. No drama, no epic story, it just came off. I thought I did really well not screaming bloody murder or breaking the rod over my knee.
That evening produced one of the most memorable fish I've ever caught. I was fishing a big swimbait slowly bumping bottom when there were four or five big blowups ten feet in front of me. I began reeling like crazy to cast at them. The big swimbait was hurtling along right under the the surface when with barely more than a couple rod lengths of line out in the clear water this striper just comes out of nowhere and nails it in plain view. It wasn't so much a case of hooking the fish as it was hoping everything held together without rod, line, hook or me breaking as it screamed off. I'll never striper fish again without remembering that strike.
At night the swimbait was the ticket but during the daylight frenzy a topwater like a pencil popper worked best. Nice stripers on a topwater, fishing life doesn't get much better than that. Then they were done for the day like you had flipped a switch. But the shad were still there by the millions. The locals had small dip nets like you would use to clean a pool with and would scoop them up by the netfulls. Someone had left theirs and I spent the middle of the day fishing shad on a hook and splitshot catching white bass. You would flip out the shad and it would swirl along the rocks in the swift current. The first four or five casts to any new piece of bank would catch a fish every cast.
While trying to dredge up a midday striper on a swimbait I hooked two sturgeon. One medium sized one you see in the photo and one huge one as long as me that rolled on the line and popped it. Tenn has been stocking sturgeon heavily and I guess I saw another half dozen swimming below the dam.
The second morning frenzy produced another memorable fish. I brought the normal striper rod with a pencil popper tied on but I also brought the eight weight fly rod with a big streamer. I had it tied on a saltwater leader I'd cut back a couple feet. After landing four stripers on the topwater plug when the fish blew up right in front of me. I tossed the big streamer into the mayhem. Nothing. I picked it up and slapped it down again. A huge swirl and it was off to the races. There was a pretty heavy current sweeping down the bank and I began to think this was a bad idea. Hmm...was the leader stronger than my backing? This was the question as I tried to stop the fish that seemed intent on heading back to it's relatives in the ocean. Finally running out of backing as the fish was streaking past an impassable cliff I clamped down on the spool and gritted my teeth hoping the backing or leader broke before the rod. Then wonder of wonders the fish stopped and slowly I began working it upstream. In the heat of summer you can really only practice catch and release for stripers below these big dams as the water in the lakes is too warm and fish stressed out by the fight die. But even here this guy literally fought himself to death. It was the only fish I kept this trip. After seeing that I put the fly rod up for the rest of the trip. If you are going to flyfish for stripers below the big dams in heavy current I think you need a tarpon rod to do it without killing fish in summer.
In fact I'd heard there were stripers below Melton Hill now as well and midday I drove over there. Here the current was slower and yes there were rockfish there. I know because you could see four big ones floating dead. One must have went thirty pounds. Don't fish below Melton Hill in the heat of summer. Again you will kill fish.
Finally wore out from getting only a couple hours sleep in two days and fishing at least forty of the past forty eight hours I parked the rental car in the shade and took a nap before heading homeward. Around a dozen stripers, a lake sturgeon, a couple drum and lots and lots of white bass, it was one of the best road trips yet.
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