Fishing for Jack Salmon in mid-January isn’t all fun and fun. In the middle of the longest cold snap northern Alabama has seen in decades, I was sitting in a boat in the middle of the Tennessee River, freezing my toes off.
Jack Salmon, actually Sauger, seem to bite more on the coldest, grayest days of winter on their way upriver to spawn. This is the time of year when they congregate below dams in the river. I know for a fact that there are a lot of Sauger in the tailwaters of Guntersville, Wheeler, and Wilson Dams because I have caught a lot of them in those waters.
Although the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has dams in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, I know little of the Jack Salmon who have escaped through the Alabama locks and currently reside in Tennessee.
This particular morning, I was trying to pour coffee from the thermos into my mug without spilling it on my bait and was trying to avoid entangling my line that was in the bottom of the boat below my feet. Attached to the end of the line was a large one ounce chartreuse and blue jig with a medium sized shiny minnow on the tip.
We were about 2 miles downstream from Guntersville Dam, near the mouth of the Paint Rock River. The water was a bit high but not high enough to harm the fish. As we were looking for a place to start drifting, we counted 26 boats anchored in places where they were fishing.
Most of the anglers used the same type of bait that I used and fished 35-40 feet deep. Every few minutes someone in one of those boats would bring in a Jack that weighed between one and three pounds. The Alabama record was over five pounds, caught with the same type of bait he was using.
I remember the first Sauger I caught as a kid. My Uncle Grady on my mother’s side and I were fishing below the Guntersville Dam, by the wall that separated the turbines from the spillways. Droplets of water hit our faces as the wind blew mist from the turbines into our faces.
I don’t remember the month, but I can still see that 12-year-old boy shivering in the cold and trying to pretend he wasn’t freezing. My discomfort only lasted a few minutes because we immediately started fishing and forgot about the cold. They were unlike any fish he had caught before. They were cigar or torpedo shaped with large brown spots on each side. They also had a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. My uncle said that Jack Salmon was the best fish in the river. He was correct!
We used live minnows weighing two ounces to lure the bait to where the fish were near the wing wall of the prey. In those days we didn’t use fish baskets to store our catch, but after a few hours our spar was full and we ran out of bait.
I have fished Sauger, a member of the perch family, many times over the years. Sometimes I was lucky and caught a few, sometimes not. If you can handle the elements and really want to catch these fish, head to the Tennessee River in Alabama. You will find Jack Salmon under any of these three large dams.
