Open: Weather is the word at Cherokee

JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. — The weather is the word on Thursday at the Basspro.com Bassmaster Eastern Open at Cherokee Lake. This morning, Tropical Storm Zeta was quickly moving up the eastern slope of the Great Smokey Mountains, or near the borders of Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina. Takeoff was delayed until 8 a.m. ET, or 15 minutes later than the original time, due to low light conditions.

The National Weather Service forecasts for the storm to pass, along with the rain, by 11 a.m. Behind it will come winds from the south at 15-20 mph. Today’s high will be 78 with the low tonight around 50.

The bigger impact on the fishing comes tomorrow, with classic post-front conditions. The high is expected to be 56, with northeast winds at 5 to 10 mph. The overnight low will be around 40 and the high on Championship Saturday will be 63.

What that means for the anglers on Friday is likely throwing out any game plan they had today. Overall there are two different bites in play. The first is a largemouth game in the upper reaches of the lake and into the Holston River. Shallow flats and creeks, called “run ins,” are the prime habitat and isolated wood and rock are the textbook casting targets. On the opposite end is the smallmouth bite in the lower end. Those fish school over main lake points, following the sloping bottom contour as they adjust to changes in the weather. Call that one a classic run-and-gun game.

The highly anticipated smallmouth bite will not materialize due to the recent warmer than normal weather. Local experts say the smallmouth bite is best with water temperatures in the low 60s, or about 10 degrees cooler than it is now.

“Smallmouth fisheries like here on Cherokee are very dependent on water temperature, and we just never got that cooler water temperature like everyone expected because of the warmer than normal temperatures,” said Scott Martin. “The smallmouth are still deep and relatively inactive.”

Even so, the current leader of the Falcon Rods Eastern Opens Angler of the Year points had a positive outlook for Thursday.

“With all this new water coming in with the storm and low pressure, I think the fishing is going to be good,” he said.

Brandon Lester’s outlook for the tournament was shrouded in mystery. He admitted to having a limit’s worth of bites each day of practice, but his mood was tempered by the incoming weather.

“Being from Tennessee, I think I know how these fish are going to act after we get all this rain, or at least I hope so,” he said. “I’m rigged up for either way.”

Whatever that means, it’s a wise move because making it to Saturday will require a forward-thinking mind capable of making quick decisions on the go, as the weather continues to change.

Jason Christie, the current Falcon Rods Bassmaster Angler of the Year leader, acknowledged the fall transition is making the fishing tough. This week he’ll be challenged without the shallow shoreline strategies that fall into his angling wheelhouse. There won’t be any frogs tied on his line.

“There are so many boats on the points,” he said. “I sat in one spot and watched boats pulling up and then move on, like the running and gunning kind of place that it is now.”

Bassmaster Elite Series pros Skylar Hamilton and Brandon Card, both skilled anglers on this lake, aren’t fishing this tournament, but they offered this noteworthy insight.

Both pros spoke of the “run ins” or ditches and small creeks that are common on East Tennessee lakes. The influx of runoff from the heavy rain attracts baitfish, and the bass. The key area for this bite is up the Holston River, where the silt loam and red clay create dingy runoff used by largemouth as ambush cover.

“The shad will push back toward the fresh water coming in, and the bass will follow them,” said Card. “That’s the pro of this weather, but the cons are many, including the lack of falling water.”

Card said that falling water pulls scattered bass off the shoreline and repositions them on deeper isolated cover, making them easier to locate.

Hamilton echoed Card’s thoughts about the runoff conditions.

“The largemouth will get in the dingy water and feed where there is inflow from the runoffs into the run-ins,” he said. When you have that much rain the bass just instinctively move shallow to those areas.”

Card and Hamilton also acknowledged that today will be the most productive of the tournament. What comes tomorrow? Most likely a lot of running and gunning, just as we’ve had at all the tournaments held in the South during the recent weeks of the fall turnover.