3 TARP fish on Dale Hollow in 90 minutes!!

[baxterboy]

A friend of mine from work named Matt, his father-in-law Randall, and I spent the day on Dale Hollow with Dave from trolldhl.com (screen name fishfindergeneral on this site) Matt and Dave's kids play on the same soccer team here in town, and after reading fishfindergeneral's posts on this site, I've been wanting to make a trip up to Dale Hollow to see if the rumors (world-class fishery, 18 inch SM are common, etc.) were true. We met Dave at the ramp at 6AM for a full day of fishing. The lake was extremely high, and we had to dodge some debris while we trolled, but despite the conditions, we had a great day with 5 personal bests.
Matt caught his personal best rainbow and a beautiful 21 inch Tennessee Angler Recognition Program (TARP) smallie, Randall bagged a 20 inch TARP smallie and a monster TARP rainbow with a 15.5 inch girth, and I got some really nice bows and a 19 inch smallie. I had a whale rainbow trout spit the hook about 5 feet from the net. Attached are 2 pics of the best rainbows we had all day which are now in our freezers. We'll probably be eating trout fillets for weeks. My camera wasn't working earlier in the day when we caught the smallies, so I'll try to post those pics when Dave gets back online and emails them to me. As if the fishing weren't enough, we saw a couple of bald eagles soar above the boat and perch high on a bluff.

-James

[stickngar21]

Those are some HAWGS. What'd you use to catch em?

[Travis C.]

Sweet trip guys.

[baxterboy]

@stickngar21 We trolled with shad.

[flytnn]

Hey Jamie!!! It's Vince! Those are some nice fish you caught there. Can't wait to go up there with you.

[flytnn]

Hey Jamie!!! It's Vince! Those are some nice fish you caught there. Can't wait to go up there with you.

[chaseasl]

I didn't realize the hollow had trout like that, always wanted to fish it, just hate to make the drive

[Fishmanjoe]

Good job on those trout!

[baxterboy]

Here are the SM pics from 5/10 on Dale Hollow. a 19, a 20, and a 20.5. I caught the 19, and the two guys that caught the 20 and the 20.5 TARP fish had never caught a smallie before!

@flytnn ---->Vince!!! Welcome to the board. Let's catch some fish this weekend.

[livebaitech]

Congrats on the great catch ! Were you trolling with downriggers?

[clean air]

Are all those rainbows?I not a trout fisherman but some look a little different than the others.Those are really big trout!

[baxterboy]

Yes, we were using downriggers, and yes, they were all rainbow trout. They had been in the cooler for a couple hours so some of the fish had lost their color. When I showed the pics to some friends at work they thought we had gone somewhere to catch salmon. I had no idea that you could catch trout like that in a middle TN lake.