Roger Stegall has been guiding anglers to smallies like this one on Pickwick Lake for more than two decades. Photo by John E. Phillips

I vividly recall a day that Jerry Crook, a top smallmouth guide from Birmingham, and I spent in fishing the tailrace of Wheeler Dam on the Tennessee River's Wilson Lake. All day long we'd been catching smallmouth bass that weighed from 1 1/2 to 4 pounds each -- and then something really big took the threadfin shad I was drifting along the bottom.

Setting the hook, I saw the tip of my rod dive to kiss the foamy whitewater escaping from the generators of the powerhouse at the base of the dam. The big fish stripping line off my reel made it seem as if I'd hooked a southbound freight train. The first time it came out of the water, I couldn't believe its width and length. It was the biggest smallmouth I'd ever hooked!

Time seemed to suspend while the battle raged. Each time the fish came to the surface, I thought I might lose it, but the hook held fast. Finally, with the smallie less than 30 feet from the boat, it wallowed on the surface as if spent, but then headed straight to the bottom, leaving me to take up slack quickly as the bronzeback ran toward the boat.

Once I felt tension on the line again, I added a little pressure. However, the line went slack yet again! The big smallmouth gathered all its strength and came straight from the bottom and into the sky above. The fish exploded upward less than half a step from the boat as it jumped almost higher than my head.

Like a frozen frame from a movie, the image of that gorilla-sized smallmouth twisting in the air is still with me today. Unfortunately, that mental impression was my only reward: The hook came out of the fish's mouth while it hung in midair before me.

That's not the only great memory I have of fishing the Tennessee River for smallmouths in North Alabama. The main reason for that is this part of the state holds two of the best smallmouth lakes in the world -- the two sisters, Wilson and Pickwick lakes

A former world-record smallmouth came from the upper reaches of Wilson Lake back in October 1950. My wife's great uncle, Hugh McLellan, was in the boat with Owen F. Smith of Fairfield when he caught that 10-pound, 8-ounce smallie.

But Wilson doesn't host all of the big-fish action for smallmouths. Pickwick is noted for giving up numbers of "hawgs" of up to 7 1/2 pounds each year.

ONE TWIN SISTER
Personally I've found the best smallmouth fishing on Wilson Lake right below Wheeler Dam.

"I like to fish live shad minnows on a No. 1 hook with a piece of lead about 12 to 18 inches up the line," explained guide Jerry Crook. "The smallmouth like to hold where two currents collide. If two generators are running at the same time, the spot where those two currents hit each other will be less swift than on either side of that groove. That's where the smallmouth often stack up."

Crook also fishes on the side of any eddy created behind large underwater boulders. When fishing the tailrace of Wheeler Dam, you hear fishermen talk about catching smallmouths either "high" -- close to the dam between the face of the structure and the small island just south of the center of the dam -- or "low" -- in the area downstream of the island.