Lake Cherokee is very beautiful nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. It has numerous points and clear water, making it look excellent for structure fishing. I spent several hours of practice trying to make the structure bite work. I drug a football jig and Carolina rig on points and humps with scattered rock. I even tried vertical fishing a drop shot in 18-35 feet of water. Unfortunately I was unable to get any bites in the deeper water. The few bites I did get during practice were all shallow. They came fishing boat docks in less than 10 feet of water with a 3/8 oz. brown finesse jig with a watermelon candy Zoom Ultravibe Speed Craw as a trailer. I would skip the jig under pontoon boats and around the shade of the dock with a 7’ MH St. Croix Legend Elite Rod and a Johnny Morris Signature Series Baitcasting Reel spooled with 14 pound XPS Fluorocarbon Line. I was also able to get some bites flipping some willow trees and working a Zara Spook along flooded shoreline grass.
I started the tournament fishing a topwater bait, and I was only able to catch a few short fish in the morning. I switched to flipping the willow trees and had several bites, and again they were all short. I proceeded to the docks catching one nice keeper and a few short fish. I ended the first day of the event with one fish weighing 2.93 lbs.. On the second day I decided to go for broke. I fished new areas with the topwater bait and was able to catch one keeper off of the topwater. I headed to the docks and caught two more keepers and lost one. I ended the tournament with just over 7 lbs. and finished in 58th place.
