Tennessee Fishing Masterclass with Alex Rudd | The Omnia Report

(upbeat music) - Hey guys, Ricky Harris here with Omni-Efficient. And we got a really exciting episode of Omni-Efficient. Hey, I'm joined by good friend Alex Brod from Knoxville. Alex, we appreciate you coming on, doing the show. - Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited. I love doing stuff like this. I always tell people anytime I get to talk, I'm really excited 'cause I'm really good at talking. That's how I do what I do for a living. It's being really good and full of hot air in somewhat good fishing information, hopefully really good fishing information today, but we'll see. We're just gonna have to get into it and see what happens. - Yeah, so I'm excited to kind of pick the brain a little bit and talk about Eastern Tennessee specifically and just for those of the viewers that don't know, I'm still still the battery self-lux where you're from and kind of what you've done in fishing especially. - Yeah, no, yeah. So my name is Alex Rudd. A lot of people probably know me from Alex Rudd fishing. It's kind of my claim to, I guess, semi-famer, semi-pro as I've been called in the past. If you know anything about me, go to the channel. Actually, just type in Alex Rudd fishing semi-pro on YouTube if you just wanna have a good laugh 'cause that was definitely a good laugh. But no, I'm a YouTuber, podcaster, content creator, but number one, I'm an angler. And I started a YouTube channel about 10 years ago and about five years ago, I made it my full-time job. And so I have Alex Rudd fishing, the YouTube channel, the podcast, Instagram, TikTok, that whole kind of stuff. And I get to fish for a living. I get to make videos about fishing and it is the greatest job in the world. But yeah, I live in Knoxville. Oh, in the Knoxville area, we'll say it's, I'm in Knoxville but it's technically not Knoxville where I'm at. But I get to fish all of these lakes around here. Watts bar, Telico, Loud, Norris, Cherokee, Mountain Hill, Chickamauga on occasion. And then two, I drive all over the country and fish. Just got back from Michigan last week, New York just a couple of weeks ago, but I still call Tennessee home. And so Tennessee is a cool place full of a bunch of crazy, diverse fishing opportunities. And that's kind of what I love about it. Like you can go to a lake like Norris and it's a hundred foot deep and 25 foot visibility in some spots. And then you go to a place like Watts bar and you can go fish grass and punch mats. Like it's crazy. But yeah, that's me and it's cool. It's cool. I enjoy being me most days. It's fun. - Absolutely too. You've got to welcome knowledge of some of these fisheries. I want to get into it here. The first thing I want to talk about is just, we're looking at kind of the greater Knoxville area here. Like you said, there's a ton of diversity just in the lakes within a hundred mile radius of Knoxville. You know, and looking at these fishing reports here, I've got selected our hot baits tab, which has just shown us the hot baits that have been featured in reports. And I've got large knock pass selected, just for eye reference through summertime. And there's just everything from frogs to crank baits. One thing I've seen is a couple of top waters here. There's the Breville pop arm, there's some more reports we'll get into in a second, the Mitch and top water. But just kind of looking from here, it seems like there's really a lot that's going on this time of year in that area. We're kind of just, you know, talk through a little bit about how some of these lakes, you know, set up and why that, you know, is the case of, you know, there's everything from pop water frog fishing to, you know, finesse fishing. We're looking at large knock pass here right now, but you know, if you go to this smallmouth bass, there's a ton of reports featured. And if anybody that's not familiar with this area, it's, you know, we've got a ton of big spotted bass as well. So, you know, there's, you know, a ton of all three different species. And, you know, just looking at some of the reports here from what we've got reported, it seems like, you know, there's a lot that's going on, but I won't let you get your thoughts on, you know, what are some of the products or techniques that you're doing this time of year? You know, why is that, you know, compared to some others? - Yeah, now, here's what's really cool is Tennessee truly has picked your poison. And the reason for that is, is two big factors. Number one is the TVA system. So all the lakes, you know, in East Tennessee, into Northern Alabama, into West Tennessee, and then up into Kentucky before it dumps into the Mississippi are all controlled by the TVA, which is the Tennessee Valley Authority. Tennessee Valley Authority built a bunch of dams back in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Really for two purposes, number one was flood control. Number two was power generation. Well, on the backside of that, they created very unique fisheries because our fisheries depend so much on current and current flow coming through these lakes. And it really is what dictates a lot of what the bass do and how bass act. Another reason that it's really unique is that we have the Smoky Mountains just to the east of us. And so you've got a bunch of water that flows out of those mountains into a lot of these lakes. And a lot of these lakes are formed by the dam, but they're really formed by the water that flows into those lakes. And so you can go from down near the dam where you're having to catch a mountain 25, 30 foot of water, doing those deep water fishing techniques to this time of year, you can run far enough up into a river or get into a kayak and paddle up a river and get far enough into a river. Well, like even in June and July, you'll still be seeing shad spawns because a lot of that water is either cool from coming out of the ground in the mountains or it's cool from coming out of the bottom of one of those dams. And so you've got just such a plethora of things that you can go and do. And so that's what's really unique about Tennessee and about where I live in a lot of these lakes that you see. It's crazy just as an example, Watts Bar is fed by Fort Loudon and Mountain Hill. Like you can go below Fort Loudon Dam right now and find smallmouth still spawning 'cause they're bringing water from below loudon and dumping it into Watts Bar and that water's just now starting to peak up into 55, 60, 65 degrees. And so not only will you see bass still up there spawning but you could potentially start seeing shad spawns as we get down into like July and August. And so that's really probably why you see like when you look at just like the macro of the fishing reports is you see such a diversity. I mean, just there, I mean, you went from Cinco to Ribintail Worm to 6XD to, I think there was a frog up there at the top. And I mean, it's just like, it just shows you the diversity of how diverse these fisheries are. And it's kind of cool because, you know, we always say the fish are biting somewhere and they definitely are and it's normally you can find something that you wanna do to go catch fish and that's these lakes and that's what a lot of, you'll see the diversity and a lot of these techniques. But I think that frog like right there on top, I think that's a great kind of starting point. I love throwing a frog this time of year and I really start to wait in total kind of that June, July, August to really lock a frog into my hand and turn it into one of the more primary top waters that I throw, especially on a lake like Watts Bar or Loudon or even some of the Highland Reservoirs like Cherokee and Douglas, you know, you've had this time period in the morning where top water is gonna be really, really prevalent. And the thing is, is up to this point in the year they've seen a lot of spooks, they've seen a lot of poppers, they've seen a lot of ploppers, they've seen all those loud intrusive things. And, you know, if you pick up something a little bit more subtle like a frog, whether it's a walking frog, whether it's flapping frogs like that, you know, whatever it is, I just think something that, it's not super big, super intrusive, got a bunch of treble hooks hanging off the bottom of it can be a great way to get some of those bass that may have been hooked by a spook already this year to still eat up on top and get some really big bites. And so, you know, that's a great example of something that I think works across the board, not just, you know, on any certain lake. But I would definitely say that, you know, with that kind of frog presentation and what I'm searching for this time of year, and it's actually what I went and did yesterday, is I'm going as far up into creeks, as far up into tributaries, I'm looking for moving water. 'Cause number one, that's what I like to do. I mean, that's my style. You know, I'll go offshore and crank a crankbait with the best of them and drag a worm, but if I had my rathers, I'd rather be in, you know, two foot of water with a frog or a flipping stick or something like that. And like I said, because of the diversity of these fisheries, it's possible to do because you can get so far up into a tributary or so far up into a river that you start, you know, encountering a little bit cooler water where these bass almost are delayed is the best way to put it. It's like they're still living in May, April and May, while the rest of the lakes in June. You know what I mean? And then what's really cool about that is on the inverse, they'll start doing fall time stuff before the rest of the lake starts doing fall time stuff, just to think that far ahead. But yeah, that's kind of a, I don't know, general macro overview of why probably you see diversity like you do, as well as just like when we look at these list of baits, how you can have so many different things going on at once. I mean, like I said, you know, for me, I am looking for flowing water. I'm going up into the tributaries and I am going to be throwing things. Like yesterday, took the kayak out, left the boat at home, 'cause we went and did a little creek fishing mission 'cause I like to call it and had to squirt away back up in somewhere that I definitely didn't want to take my fiberglass bass boat because I ran my kayak up on a log yesterday. I would have hate to have done that in my glass bass boat. That wouldn't have been very good. But you know, even going up into that creek, I took just a few different things with me. One was a frog, the other one was a max scent general. So a stick bait. I took a glide bait, which I think I saw a big swim bait on that list somewhere. And then I took a ploppur and then a flipping bait. And so when you go back out to those hot baits, you look at the macro of that. I mean, right there, you've got a frog, you've got your stick bait. I think I saw you. I mean, a jig and a flipping bait is essentially synonymous, kind of the same thing. And then as well as right there, there was a buco that's like a bullshad or something like that. Myself, I don't know, I lean more towards glides and like paddletail swimbaits, but the buco baits and stuff like that will work just as well. It's kind of preference there. But those are the things that I took with me because a lot of what we're dealing with, again, even though that water may be cooler, you're still dealing with a lot of post-spawn fish. They're spawned out, they're hungry, they're looking for big mills. We're gonna start rolling up on the gizzard shad spawn here before too long, about 75 to 80 degree water that really starts to kick off and really starts to get good. And so these bass, regardless if they're in, you know, 50 foot of water and five foot of water, they are geared up, their metabolism's ripping and they wanna eat big crap. And I'm gonna oblige them. I'm gonna go throw big stuff. Like, you know, I'm gonna see if I can get them to eat a glide bait in a 120 size choppo and, you know, then also the power of fish and stuff like a frog and all that. So yeah, it's very interesting. I love to see the hot baits because it really does number one show the diversity, but it also just kind of just shows, it's almost like a, it's almost proof text to what I say. You know, a lot of people, I think, I say things sometimes on the internet and they're like, this dude's smoking crack. And it's like, no, no, you really can go do whatever you wanna do to catch fish. And like these fishing reports prove it. I mean, I think there was one I saw there was a frog, some kids caught fish on Cherokee, it looked like. And like, Cherokee's not exactly like a frog lake, you know what I mean? But when you're in the right place, when you're willing to run up, you know, into some of these creeks, into some of these rivers, get way up shallow into, you know, another thing a lot of the Highland Reservoirs have is like buck brush and like, what happens? So this is an interesting point, little rabbit hole here. So like the Highland Reservoirs especially, like when you get a little bit lowland, when you're talking about like Loudon, Teleco, Watts Bar, they don't fluctuate as much. But like, Norris Cherokee Douglas, they'll fluctuate anywhere from 25 to 35 and even 45 feet up and down, 'cause they pull those lakes down in the winter to do what I said one of the jobs of the TVA was, which is flood control. Well, when they bring that water back up, you know, in the spring, it comes up really slow. And so a lot of those buck bushes, that kind of, you know, near water, but not like aquatic vegetation, it's just near water vegetation, will end up getting flooded. And those bass will just automatically use that as their first kind of stopping point and or just live there until the water goes back down after they spawn. They move up, they make a bed up in a gravel, you know, a gravel point or something like that. And there's a buck bush 20 feet away, they just swim over to that buck bush and they sit there, because the buck bush is producing a bunch of sap, which attracts bugs, which attracts shad and blue gills and crawdads and everything else. And so that bass is sitting there, it has shade, it has, you know, something to get up next to and feel protected and it has food and like there's no reason for them to leave. And so things like frogs and flipping baits and stick baits and stuff like that can be super effective and you can find those kind of, you know, like bass that just live in that area all year long, those residential bass and be able to catch them on those things and or find those bass that decide to go and get in 25 foot of water and you can shake them in in front of them or crank a six XD or drag a big ribbon tail worm or whatever you want to do. I mean, like I said, it's so diverse. Like I'll just keep saying that 'cause you can literally do anything that you want to do. - Yeah, and I think something interesting too, I wanted to call out was, you know, looking at these reports for these three different frogs, you know, the two hollow body goats, both of them reported the structure is, you know, flood and brush. And I think so many anglers kind of get, you know, this notion that, you know, hollow body frog, you know, it's typically just something used for vegetation, you know, fish over it. But, you know, it's such an effective tool, especially, you know, an official of that for the brush from Cherokee. And we get kind of a similar phenomenon, you know, like some around like Lake Cumberland, you know, that will have that big fluctuation throughout the year. When, you know, there's, in my opinion, it comes in on a better technique for, especially catching big bass than, you know, using one of those frogs, 'cause you can throw that thing so far back in that brush and just the way it's designed, you know, you're able to work it through that. And, you know, it's really one of the only effective top water presentations, you know, that you can use in that kind of cover. But, you know, everything from laydowns to flooded brush to, you know, vegetation, I feel like the hollow body frogs become such a versatile tool for anglers. - Absolutely, I actually have another YouTube channel called Bass Fishing Tips for anybody that wants to check it out. We just started it, got it up and running. It's doing pretty well. But I did a whole video about frog fishing where I talked about open water frog fishing. You know, I think open water frog fishing is one of the most overlooked techniques in bass fishing, 'cause everybody, you know, the way I explained it in the video is that everybody narrows frog fishing down to this short little window of time which is matted vegetation. And not every lake is gonna have matted vegetation. You know, there's only a few lakes in the country that are really known for good matted vegetation and then catch some frogs, you know, frog fish and out of it. And if you just broaden that spectrum out to like realize that you can throw a top water frog in essentially every scenario that you can throw any other top water plus you can put in all those places that you can't put any other top water that has treble hooks or anything like that. You start to turn it into a deadly tool. And I think that that's why I've had a ton of success on open water frog fishing is because exactly what you said, you know, when I look at a buck bush or I look at a dock or I look at an overhang or something like that, you know, I think I would love to get a top water bite out of there. And there's only one thing that you can skip up to the base of a buck bush and bring it over five limbs and not get it hung up and still be able to get a fish out of there and that's a frog. And so that's the tool that I kind of learned how to use. And I think walking the frog and open water frog fishing is something that people don't need to overlook, especially here in East Tennessee and some of these lakes that we've got. - Yeah, absolutely. So I've grown a dog, I wanna touch on something you were talking about a little bit earlier Alex, and it looks, you know, looking at the actual diversity of these specific lakes. I wanna utilize a couple of other layers that we've got here. The first one being these C-Map con force. And these are available for, you know, these are generated by users that utilize the C-Map. So, but I think there's something really cool here that you don't wanna really talk to me. You talk about diversity and just looking at this is, you know, Cherokee here, you know, kind of on the lower end, but you know, it's not uncommon to see depth. It's a lot of the impacts of 80, 100 feet in a lot of these lakes. And, you know, kind of talk through, you know, at least your mindset, you know, looking at, you know, maybe someone's coming to East Tennessee for the first time or is really just kind of getting started fishing, you know. You know, are you even looking in, you know, some of those depths or is that, you know, almost you, like something you can eliminate a big portion of that lake because you're just not going to, you know, target some of these really deep areas. I've heard stories of guys catching, you know, like smallmouth, spotted bass, largemouth, all three, and 60, 70 feet of water, you know, before at times. So, you know, what's your kind of thought process? And, you know, how do you really go when, you know, lakes that, you know, some of these that you could really go as deep as you've got line on your road to go? - Yeah, yeah. No, Cherokee is interesting. So Cherokee is actually the lake that I caught a fish in the deepest that I've ever caught a fish on and it was 75 foot of water. And, you know, that was dead a winter. And we were doing the whole, you know, vertical jig and thing back in the day before Ford, Face and Sonar kind of took over, you know, and so we were too de-in them and catching those fish. But yeah, I mean, for me personally, again, I'm a shallow water power angler guy. I'm going to run way up in the river and go find fish that want to eat chappos and stuff like that. But that being said, you know, there is a bite out deep on a lake like Cherokee, you know, and if you're approaching a lake like Cherokee, I think what you've got to understand is, you know, I actually had this question asked to me just the other day. I had a viewer just messaged me on Instagram was talking to me about it. He said, "Do I need to be looking on the ledges?" And he said, "I'm visiting Cherokee and Douglas." And I said, "I think what you got to understand is there's not like traditional ledges on these TVA lakes." You know, those types of ledges, and when you think about like TVA lake fishing, that you're going to see more on like the river part of the Tennessee River, Loudon, you know, Watts Bar, Chickamauga, Nickajag. That's that ledge fishing deal. We're on Cherokee. Cherokee is a tributary that flows into the Tennessee River. And so essentially it's just like a flooded valley. And so you that's what creates these dramatic contour, contour lines that you see where you go from two foot of water to 80 foot of water and it's, you know, 30 feet off the bank. And so like when you approach a lake like this, you really got to understand like deep water fish are going to be on those long dramatic drawn out points. They're going to be in those saddles in between, you know, two points or something like a cut up into a pocket. I mean, right here's a great example. We're kind of looking at it here. You guys can see, you know, as you move into this pocket, pretty dramatically and pretty quickly, you can go from 35 foot of water to 10 foot of water. And then you go on up onto the bank. I mean, you're in two foot of water. And so like that's an area where if, you know, you can see like you've just got like this slot little, I'm trying to point to my screen like you guys can see it. Um, there's like just those slot little like cutbacks and slot little like points and differentiating points. Exactly those spots, those are what's going to hold fish if there's fish out deep, you know, that and then man made and or natural structure. You know, a lot of what I would do if I'm looking out deep this time of year on lakes like this, you're doing a lot of idling. You're looking for rock piles. You're looking for fish traps. You're looking for sunken boat docks. You're looking for, we actually used to have a place on Cherokee, it's gone now. But some dude had dropped man made cane pots right next to a sunken boat. And if you could align your crankbait up and get in between those cane pots and that sunken boat, you would catch one every single time. They used to live there. And so like that's a lot of what you look for on these kinds of lakes. I mean, it's a lot of map study. It's a lot of really looking at things and going, huh, here's like a fairly straight bank with this kind of underwater point that's sticking out here in 20 feet. Let me drop a pen on that on Omnia Pro and let me go look at that. That's the kind of stuff you're gonna look for. And a lot for the most part, you know, summer time bass, they're gonna stay in that like 25 to 30 foot range for the most part, unless you're doing the shallow water thing. You don't really start seeing those like 70 foot and 80 foot bass until the dead of winter. And I think a lot of that has to do with, they don't have anywhere else to go because like what you're looking at right now, Ricky, like what your hand was just on your little pointer, that'll be out of the water. Like that's how dramatic Cherokee Lake drops down. And so the only place that those bass have to go is dead out here in the middle and they'll get on like a small little hump like that or something like that, you know, and they'll be sitting off the side of it or suspended over the top of it, you know, and they'll be sitting in anywhere from 30 to 60, 70, 80 foot of water in some cases. And it's just a really, that Cherokee in particular is a really interesting fishery because if you zoom out a little bit, you know, you've got the whole lower part of the lake, but scroll down onto the, a little bit lower, a little bit more southern. The very southern or most point of the lake right there, that is a creek that flows in. And, you know, during the summer, that will flood completely out. And as you can see, there's a lot of dry lance go, so go south a little bit more, not that pocket, the one right below it, right there you go. So you can see those two creeks flowing in right there. Well, what a lot of people don't realize is that, that image that we have is, that's winter pool. And so, you know, the water's 20, 30 foot down there. That water will flow all the way back into there. And again, it's one of those areas that you can go through, the frog, the flipping bait, you know, a lot of flooded vegetation and stuff like that. And you can go fish a lot of that. And it's just very, again, very, very unique, something that a lot of people don't realize there. And so you can go do that in the morning and then go fish a point in the afternoon and do both the cranking a crank bait and throwing a big worm all the way to, you know, throwing a wacky and throwing a frog and that kind of stuff. So just really, Cherokee's a really interesting fishery. And it sets up a lot like Norris and Douglas as well, where you've got both of those options to go and do whatever, kind of whatever you want to do. - Yeah, it's really cool looking at, you can see how far the disc creek runs even when the water's down. You know, when you think about the opportunities for, I mean, there to be a lot of fish, you know, up and down throughout this creek, you know, depending on the water level. So it's almost like the playing field is constantly changing on, you know, a lot of these lakes. - Exactly. And, you know, and it's one of those things, the more and more I've fished, the more and more I've learned that bass will be in places that you never think a bass would be. And definitely on these fisheries, and I think it's just 'cause we do get a lot of pressure on them, you know, I think these bass have started living different. And I have found some really cool things going as far up a creek as I could possibly go, you know, and I mean, whether it be in my bass boat or in a kayak, it's funny, I tell people all the time, sometimes I just gotta park the bass boat and get out the paddle kayak because I wanna go really, really, really far up a creek and you can find bass. Like it's really crazy. - It's super cool. And, you know, talking about some of the diversity too, I wanted to switch to another layer here, the water clarity. 'Cause I think this is another big factor of a lot of these lakes, especially, you know, you've got, you know, at times some of these places, like, you know, Cherokee, especially on a can be super, super clear. And, you know, this looking at this map here really kind of gives you a good indicator of that. You know, you can see down here on the lower end where there's, you know, pretty clean water and good visibility, but you start getting up into some of these rivers and there's, you know, quite a bit of color even to, you know, muddy looking stuff. So, you know, and that's something that, you know, is that water's constantly flowing in and out. There's different areas of the lake that are gonna be, you know, have this color. So, you know, is it, you know, how much does that change effect some of these fish? You know, say, you know, we're in some of this cleaner water here, but, you know, there's a big rain and then, you know, a big portion of this lake, this part of the lake gets, you know, muddy. Is that, you know, or you're gonna be looking for some of those fish to pull up or, you know, do you think in a lot of cases they, you know, just kind of staying in foot where they are? - Yeah, I think it's an interesting question. You know, one of the things definitely in the summertime, what I've noticed is the water clarity, the clearer the water, the harder they actually are to catch. When we get a little bit dirtier water, the easier they are to catch because, like, on the lower end of a lake like Cherokee, you will see, you know, 20, 30 foot visibility in some cases. And then, in other times, just depending on turbidity, depending on, you know, plankton blooms, depending on what's going on, you'll have five foot of visibility, you know what I mean? And so it's really, really interesting. I think one thing that I look for, to kind of answer that question is, I always look for mixing water. You know, if we've had a big rain, if we've got a lot of river flow, you know, I don't wanna be in the chocolate milk, but I also don't wanna be in the gin and clear stuff. I wanna be in something that's mixing. I wanna be in something that's somewhere in between those two, somewhere to a little bit more dirty, somewhere to a little bit more clear, because it seems like if there are bass that are gonna pull up, they're gonna pull up and they're gonna use that to their advantage. And I think it's just predatory instinct. You know, I think that they, I think a bass knows that it's the apex predator in a body of water. And when water starts to mix, their little instinctual brains go, that just got way easier to kill stuff 'cause it can't seem anymore. And so they'll move into it, you know what I mean? But again, going back to what I said, you don't wanna go like chocolate milk either, because I think sometimes their little brains go, "Now I can't see and something could kill me, so I'm just gonna sit here and I'm not gonna do anything." I think as far as deep water bass though, I think when the water gets dirty, you know, what I've noticed is they kind of stay put, they go kind of lock jaw. They don't really wanna participate. And I think again, that has to do with what I just said, it's just an instinctual drive of self-preservation, you know what I mean? And so, but one thing, our saving grace again is our dams. And that's the one thing is, if we know there's a big rain event coming, the TVA will draw these lakes down four or five foot, you'll have this huge influx of rain, and then they're able to open those dams back up. And I've seen a lake like, you know, Norris or Cherokee or whichever one go from chocolate milk to five to six foot visibility within 24 hours, or vice versa. And so it's one of those things, it's like, you know, I would, if you're there, and unfortunately, you get stuck in one of the many rainstorms that we've been having this year so far, I mean, it's all it's done is rain here in East Tennessee. Then I would just really go and look for the mixing water and give it a couple of days, if you can. And, you know, places like where those creaks are dumping in and stuff like that, those are gonna be the first things to get dirty, but they're also gonna be the first things that clear up. And so, you know, you'll have dirty water, but if you go far enough back in some of these creaks, I'm a lot of them are fed by groundwater, and that groundwater sometimes doesn't even get dirty. You know, it filtrates through sandstone and limestone, and it just comes out of the ground, clear as drinking water. And those are areas that if you go far enough back up in a creek and stuff like that, you can find areas where those biceps will still eat, where they still wanna participate and you can go and catch some fish. - Yeah, just looking here, you know, in Cherokee, where, you know, kind of the mouth of germinate is and before it kind of splits off, and gets more like a river section of the Holston, you know, you're kind of seeing exactly kind of what you're talking about there, where you see this, you know, darker stuff coming from, you know, these two big tributaries here, you kind of see in that mix, you see some of this clear water that's still mixed with some of this dirty here, this sample, you know, right here and even one off a little bit in this big dent here. - Yep. - You know, it's a great-- - In a lot of that clear water that you're seeing there, it's a great example. Like that's just a groundwater spring that flows in that makes that creek clear. And so like, that's a great example of what I'm talking about, like you see the clarity there in the mass of kind of dirtier water, you'll see like these clear, smaller creeks, these like little fingers that go off. And a lot of that's just, it's like a groundwater creek or it's a spring or something that comes out of ground. And it's gonna flow clear no matter how hard it rains. - Yeah, that's interesting. Even, you know, way on off the river, or you would think there would be some, you know, pretty consistency, you know, you're still seeing some of these little sections that are, you know, staying clear, you know, it's pretty muddy around. - Exactly, exactly. - Yeah, and one thing too that let me turn on our wind layer here, you know, looking at the winds kind of, you know, coming in the perfect direction to be, you know, talking about this, but you know, with this angle here, it's kind of running, you know, out of the west, southwest a little bit, and it's, you know, running right straight up the lake. And I know I've been on Cherokee enough times to go that you can get, it can get pretty rough out there at times. But, you know, being able to see this man and, you know, knowing that there's gonna be a lot of these waves coming in here, and, you know, especially this section of the lake right here is, you know, really gonna get pounded. You know, is that something that you're looking for as well? You know, 'cause I know from the sort of that has a big impact on, you know, staying up water between that and the boat traffic, you know, it can really create some mud lines and things along the banks even when there's not been any rain. So is that something that you look for at times as well, or is it, you know, you're really more so focused on the, you know, trying to find any incoming water as opposed to, you know, areas that are being staged being created by that wind flow and boat traffic. - Yeah, no. So actually the wind layer is my favorite layer on Omnipro. And it's because wind is your friend in a lot of cases, especially on Cherokee Lake. We always joke that, you know, Cherokee is obviously named after the Cherokee Indians, but they had to have had a phrase in Cherokee that said the wind has to blow for fish to bite on Cherokee Lake because it does. If the wind's not blowing on Cherokee, it's gonna be hard pressed to get them to bite. And I don't know why that is, but it just is. But I love the wind layer because, you know, two things, what you said, it's gonna help me to know like, if with Cherokee, that lake can get squirrely really, really quick because for the most part, it sits east to west. And so when the wind gets blown from east to west, she'll get rowdy. Number two, obviously kind of what you're talking about, two, you're gonna have, you know, the water get a little bit dirty and all that kind of stuff. If you're fishing up shallow, especially lower into the lake with boat traffic and stuff. But what I love the wind layer for more than anything is the positioning of fish. And what I like to do is I like to look, you know, into the past and then going into the future because if I know the wind's been blown on a certain bank all night long and it dies down right at sunrise and or just, you know, starts to get a little bit slower at sunrise, I can go out there with a top water and throw top water on those banks and know that bass are probably gonna be positioned there because they've been positioned there all not already and I've won actually several tournaments on that lake using the wind layer, you know, the wind layer like that because what I would do is I literally, the not before I would look and I go, the wind has been blowing into these banks all night and you would get to the lake and the wind it may have died down, the wind may have changed a little bit but you know where that pounded in on that one bank for six or seven hours straight, fish or position and you go through, you know, whatever it is you need to be throwing to get those fish to bite any particular situation and they bite and so I love the wind layer because of that and you know, when you obviously lay over the map layer like that as well, then you can kind of look at the topography of the bottom of the lake, you know and whether it's like right there, you just hit it, bingo like that's gonna be a great thing, we got that wind blowing in there, you got a little bit of a horseshoe kind of saddle there jumps up from 20 to 12 feet of water, that's gonna be a great place that you're gonna be able to throw top water in the morning and then pull off in the afternoons and be able to throw you know, deep water stuff and all that kind of stuff and or, you know, just push right up on the bank in the morning and have a bunch of fish that are probably up there eating shad, eating blue gills and just have residential fish up shallot too so the wind layer is huge, wind is your friend and you know, my philosophy of bass fishing always is current, current and more current and we create current either artificially, naturally by something flowing out of the ground flowing out of a mountain somewhere or wind it's the three ways that we make current and like current, current and current that's the best way to catch bass, especially here in East Tennessee. - Yeah, absolutely, just like you were talking about with the wind, you know, it's tomorrow morning it's gonna be setting up, you know, perfect for what you're talking about, you know, there's gonna be some wind, you know, the rest of the day, the night, you get into, you know, where it's not seven, tomorrow morning, the wind's really, you know, calmed down, it's not hardly, you know, it's about 0.7 miles per hour is what it's predicted, so. - And I mean, dude, if anybody's, I mean, obviously this isn't going out right now but if anybody were to be watching this on June 19th at 3.49 I would go through a spook or something, Jay Walker, Kane Walker, something up on top of that little flat right there 'cause there's gonna be one of three things that happens, number one, it's either gonna be a big large mouth, number two, a big small mouth or if you're really lucky there'll be about a 35 pound rockfish, eat that thing and then you will really have something on your hands to deal with, so that's a wicked little spot right there. I would go ahead and drop a pin on that one. I like to look at that one. - Yeah, we will, we're gonna go and make a wake one right now. - Yeah, there you go, there you go. We'll put that one in the back pocket, right? - Yeah, I'm gonna not forget that one the next time I come down to Cherokee, I'm gonna. - Listen, don't you come down here and not invite me. That's the whole thing. Don't ever tempt me with a good time, I always show up. - Oh, we'll name it Alex's juice. - Alex's juice, there you go. I like it, I like to look at that whole little spot right there, you get the little, you know what I mean, it's a good rolling point with two deep sections off both sides, and that's good looking stuff. But, and I tell you something else, small rabbit hole, house foundations is another big thing that we have, 'cause a lot of when they flooded these places they just moved the families out and flooded the houses and Cherokee and Douglas in particular, a lot of house foundations. If you were to look at my Humembert grass, I have probably 50 or 60 house foundations marked on every lake, and those bass love those house foundations, 'cause they're just right corners at the bottom of the lake and bass love corners and hard lines and they get all over those things, that's another thing to look for on those lakes. That looks like a house foundation kind of point, that's why I kind of thought about that, it looks like we're somewhere where that would have happened. - Yeah, and it's just one other additional piece of cover that you have at your disposal in some of these lakes in the East Trenton of C. I don't know if there's a common piece of cover that you can't find somewhere running so this used grass to every type of rock you can think of. - That's it. - It's really got so much diversity there. - Absolutely, and I think that another thing just to hit on really quick, it's kind of, always tell people this is being active angler, and what I mean by that is if you get a bite on something, make sure you kind of look and see, was that pea gravel, was that sand, was that chunk rock, was that big river stones, 'cause that can be a determinant factor too, on so many of these lakes. I've seen times, even up shallow when I'm flipping and pitching, doing the kind of river stuff, it's like, they'll be on a section of river slicks and nothing else. And I just got to run around and look for river slicks and that's where they want to be, or sand, or whatever it is, and it's just very interesting, something else to think about. - Yeah, and that's a good thing to call it, with efficient reports, especially, there's so many different types of structure that you can actually tag in your vision report, but leave in descriptions and really get specific like that. It's so helpful for a fisher like this, where there's so many different lower nuances, different things that you can look at, and that you really need to take into consideration of how if you really want to try to get the most out of each consecutive trip after the next, you know, it's important that information about the efficient reports. - Absolutely. - You know, I feel like I've got a free get mirror, but it's impossible for any angler, you know, the fish is quite a bit, or I remember exactly what was going on all the time, and you know, if I found those reports, there's a, you've got it all there for your reference. - Absolutely, and attach pictures too, that's my big thing, I go back and scroll through my camera roll looking, and like, I was like, oh, that's what I was doing on any particular day, and with Omnia, you can just kind of condense it all into one spot. So that you got all your fishing stuff in one spot, so it's not fishing, then your dog, and then the food you ate, and then the vacation you went on, and then a picture of your wife, it's just the fishing stuff, that's kind of the cool part about having it all right there on the Pro app. - Yeah, and one other thing I wanted to call it, I'm glad you mentioned the pictures, you know, we're looking at the contours here from C-MAF, but I think this is interesting, if you look at this point here specifically when I turn this off, and you'll actually see that, oh, there's a big portion of that, that my white point that we were talking about there is out of the water, - Yep. - in this picture. So one of the things that's so helpful with those pictures and the white points is, you know, in the wintertime, you're able to go ride around, and you can actually see it sticking out of the water, so take a picture of it, and you know, add it, you can add photos to your white points as well, and you know, it's something that, I do own on Lake Cumberland, you know, we have the same kind of scenario, it goes on, you know, and everything from brush piles to rock piles that, you know, sticking out of the water, it's such a great opportunity to go out there and actually take that picture, and then be able to associate with the white points, so when the water comes up, and you go back to that, you know, exactly, watch the fish, and if there's a limb that sticks off, you know, quite a bit, then you know exactly what you're looking at there. - Oh, and that's so cool too. Yeah, I mean, that's so cool too, for like, I think a lot of people we live in an age where, you know, like some dudes have $25,000 worth of electronics on their boats, and other dudes have their iPhone, and like, the guys with the iPhone now have the advantage of the dude with $25,000 worth of electronics because they have this right at their fingertips, you can pull this up, you can have it, you know, like you said, I mean, set yourself up on the perfect angle to make a cast by looking at that, at that, you know, the satellite view, and then overlaying it with the map view, and being able to do all those different things, and make a perfect cast, and so, I think it's one thing that I always kind of tell people about Omnia Pro is it's like, you get the advantage of having all the expensive electronics, plus a bunch of other stuff that expensive electronics just don't even have. Like, I love my Hummin' Birds, but I can't pull up wind layers on my Hummin' Birds, but I can do that on Omnia Pro, which is really cool, and it kind of combining those two things, it makes a deadly tool set. - Yeah, absolutely. We'll listen, Alex, I really appreciate you coming on the show today, and before we go, I got one more, we'll share the question for you. We've been talking about Cherokee part of it, we'll use Cherokee as the example for this question, but I want you to make, if you had to pick one bait for spring, summer, and fall on Cherokee, what would they be and why? - Spring, summer, and fall. If I just want to go catch a bunch of fish on Cherokee, like spring, summer, and fall, and I'm gonna limit myself a little bit on the summer just because I'm a little bit of a topwater attic, but it would be a topwater. Like, you know, a walk-in' topwater bait, something like a Berkeley J-walker, or a cane walker, or something like that, or whatever your favorite topwater walk-in' bait is, that would be what I choose. And like I said, I limit myself a little bit in the summer 'cause our bite window kind of shrinks down to early in the morning or late in the evening, but man, spring and fall on a lake like Cherokee, you have so many shadows, you have so many bass upshallow, and when those days are a little bit shorter, and those feeding windows are a little bit narrower, man, you can lock a big topwater in your hand on a lake like that all day long and kind of go, "Hey, I know I'm only gonna get like 10 to 12 bites, but when one of them finally comes and loaded on this thing, it's gonna be fun, and it's gonna be big." And then, too, you've got the added advantage of like running into a big stryper, rock bass, or rockfish, as we call 'em, but a big stryper, or something like that, and even walleye. I can't tell you how many giant walleye I've caught in the spring on Cherokee on walking baits, you know? Hook 'em in the morning during a tournament, and you can't see 'em 'cause the sun ain't up yet, and you think you've hooked the state record, you know, it's just like a 32-inch walleye on a J-walker, so. Yeah, dude, that would be the one bait just for my love of top-water lures. That's the one I'm picking. - Cool, perfect. Since this is probably the only opportunity I have to, you know, I'm born and raised and get tough and you're a Tennesseean, which side of Del Hollow do you think the world records want? - I mean, Tennessee, of course, but, you know, dude. You know, so there was a whole thing about that, and there's like a whole guy that did like a whole research project on it, and they legitimately think that he was like smack dab in the middle. Like, there was something about something he said and the way they wrote it down, so I forgot the whole thing. I watched a YouTube video on it, but I don't know. I mean, here's the deal. You wanna know, you wanna have my hot, hot take on this? I don't think that's a real, real record. I don't think it was a smallmouth. I don't know for certain, but I just don't, I don't know. I don't know if it was a smallmouth. - That's interesting. You know, I don't know if you'd seen or not, but Laurel River Lake in Kentucky, they actually, it's been several years ago, but they were actually doing a netting survey for a blue, it was walleye, but they accidentally caught a smallmouth that they weighed on a hand scale that was a little over 12. - Jeez. - Oh, no mercy. - Oh, it's funny, you know that. I think what the whole thing is, I hear that argument so many times about ramps and just among anglers, and I don't know that we'll ever know for sure, but yeah, I just think it's funny that Kentucky and Tennessee both claim to have the world record. - Yeah, I think, I think if we ever see another world record smallmouth, I think it'll come from below either Wheeler or Pickwick Dam. I think that's where it'll come from. You're seeing a lot of nine, 10, found smallmouth down there. And I think that's where we'll see it come from, 'cause you got big smallmouth that eat gizzard chat and blue gills and stuff like that. And that's just the master of disaster for growing 'em giant. And I think that's where we'll see it if it ever gets broken again. Hopefully it's by me, that'd be pretty cool. I wouldn't mind that, but I think that's where we'll see it from. - I'm gonna go break it on the spot you give up to me right here. - Hey bro, that's it. If there's a 12 pounder on Cherokee, dude that might be the spot. I don't know, Cherokee. Cherokee is a crazy lake to me. It's one of those lakes some days you go and you're like, this is the worst lake on planet earth and other days you go. And you're like, I'm the king of the world. And so I don't know, man, just have to see what happens. - Yeah, but listen Alex again, but I really appreciate you coming on so much and look forward to seeing some more of the content, things you do, like I said, go check out Alex's YouTube channel and the bass fishing tips as well. And we appreciate everyone watching. - Yep, absolutely. Thank y'all. Thank you. I don't wait. - Oh, I don't wait, wait, wait. - Oh yeah. Oh, there's our outro. - I'll break it. No way I just broke it. I think I just broke it. Well, bye buddy. I hope you find your dad. (laughs) See you guys. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)