Carolina rigs are worth a try on Douglas Lake, particularly as the bass move shallow. Photo by Tom Evans.

Most reservoirs that are next to each other have similar fishery habitats. Many are in line on the same waterways -- fed by the same river systems. Douglas and Cherokee lakes in East Tennessee are about a 30-minute drive from one another -- but although they are related, they’re more like distant cousins than close relatives.

Neighboring Douglas and Cherokee lakes are two separate bodies of water fed by different watersheds. The differences those watersheds produce in the bass fisheries have a big effect on anglers.

DOUGLAS LAKE --SCIENTIFICALLY
One of John Hammonds’ jobs as a Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) fisheries biologist is to monitor the bass at Douglas Lake. Concerning the age/size/population structure of black bass at Douglas Lake, he said, the largemouth bass have a great reproduction rate and really fast growth -- but they don’t get very old, which limits how big the vast majority of fish can get.

The electro-fishing catch rate for Douglas is at least two times and as much as four times higher than any of the other reservoirs that Hammonds samples. Hammonds said that, obviously, there are plenty of largemouth bass in Douglas, so out of that many fish, they occasionally see a 7- or 8-pounder.

There is a trophy regulation in place for smallmouth bass here, and their size structure is usually really good. Of the few smallmouths that the agency sees in its sampling, Hammonds said the smallmouths are generally bigger than the largemouths. Because there are so few smallmouths, he said they haven’t been able to collect a large enough sample to get age and growth data, but they hope to really soon.

Hammonds said largemouths are dominant in the lake because of their numbers, but smallmouth bass have come on a lot lately. The agency sees more and more smallies each year, but this year (2007), the population looked like it was starting to “level off.”

The agency did stock some smallmouth bass near the dam the last couple of years to help boost the natural reproduction, and probably as a result of those stocking efforts, biologists did see more 8- to 12-inch smallmouths this year than normal. Hammonds said those fish should continue to grow and help the smallmouth population continue to increase.

“We only see smallmouths on the lower end of the reservoir and in the tributary rivers of Douglas,” Hammonds added. “Smallmouth bass prefer cooler, clear water and Douglas is not their favorite kind of habitat. As the water in the lake continues to clear, we should see the smallmouth bass population increase, but this is a slow process.”

Over the years, some anglers feel Cherokee and Douglas seem to run in cycles -- while one is hot, the other seems to drop off -- and many of these anglers think it’s more because of fishing pressure between the two lakes than anything else.

Hammonds said that could be the case, but he doesn’t know that for sure. Mainly because the TWRA doesn’t see that phenomenon in their electro-fishing data on a yearly basis, and they never have a creel clerk on Douglas and Cherokee the same day. He said not to get him wrong, he knows that the fish bite better on one lake than the other on certain days, but Hammonds just can’t see how that would happen enough to where it would be a noticeable pattern.