With the Bassmaster Classic taking place on Fort Loudoun-Tellico lakes, this will be the second time in a little more than a month that B.A.S.S. will visit the Tennessee River. The Elites fished the season’s first tournament at Lake Guntersville, but that was a very different fishery.
It’s all the same water that travels through, but the lakes where the Classic will take place have almost no grass. We get a little bit of grass in the summer, but it’s nothing like Guntersville and other TVA lakes downriver. It’s more hard cover — natural rock, clay points and riprap — basic East Tennessee fishing.
Also, Fort Loudoun, which is part of the Tennessee River, is not very wide. It’s kind of like a big creek. It has a lot of winding sections without many bars and big flats like you see elsewhere on the Tennessee River. It’s more like a river channel with points and small flats.
These lakes are different from Lake Guntersville, where the bass could be living anywhere around the grass. These fish are very isolated on specific pieces of cover or structure. They don’t tend to roam across a flat like the other Tennessee River lakes. They’re really picky about where they like to sit. They like to sit out of the current, and they like to feed in the current, around a piece of cover or structure.
For the anglers fishing the Classic, this makes it pretty predictable in the places where they’re gonna get bites. You can fish a lot of good-looking stuff and not get any bites and still be on a good pattern.
Fort Loudoun, in particular, is a lot tougher than most of the other Tennessee River lakes. That’s because it’s located by the biggest city on the river and that means it’s a very pressured fishery.
This is the kinda place where you can get right in a hurry, but it’s more likely that you’ll catch two big ones on one spot. You might catch a 5-pounder and a 4-pounder and then you might not get another bite there, but those two are game changers.
Another thing that can make this fishery kinda challenging is the fact that you won’t find those big groups of fish, as you do on other parts of the Tennessee River. It’s a lot more of a grind; it’s picking up one fish here, one there. It’s a lot of hodgepodging around, rather than finding one spot and sitting there for three days and winning the tournament.
The only time I’ve seen one area last for three days is when Jeff Gustafson won the 2021 Elite in the canal between Fort Loudoun and Tellico. I think, at that time, he was just fishing for fish that had never been fished for the way he was fishing.
Now, this is all just my local knowledge, and that’s the way I’ve fished these waters all my life. But all these Classic competitors will bring their own skill sets from their region, and they could find something that nobody has ever found.
Maybe somebody will find another overlooked place like the one that Gustafson did and win it that way. I feel like there’s a good opportunity that could happen, because we’ve seen it play out that way before.
Whatever happens, this should be an interesting Classic. I’m not fishing this one, but I’ll be watching it. I’m looking forward to seeing how it’s won.
