Allow me to digress for a moment. I have no clue as to how using soap chunks to bait trotlines came to pass, but the practice has long been highly regarded, though it's not exactly in vogue these days. The most popular soap, by all accounts, was Ivory, though I've heard that Cashmere Bouquet was another favorite. A Texas company even manufactures its own version nowadays -- strictly for fishing, not for washing. Accounts of the homemade bars' effectiveness are many -- and, in fact, you can see for yourself by going online and visiting www.catfishbaitsoap.com.

But back to Gainesville Lake and the catfish action there. This 6,400-acre stretch of river is where the southern end of the engineered portion of the Tenn-Tom Waterway begins. The starting point is at 28-year-old Howell Heflin Lock and Dam, some eight miles north of Epes. To the north is Aliceville Lake, which crosses over into Mississippi.

At Gainesville Lake, which boasts eight public-use areas with bank and boat access, some of the best catfishing can be found in the venue's southernmost areas. The fish are in the main river channel as a rule, especially when the water temperature is sizzling. But early on in the summer, look for them in the backwater sloughs, where there is plenty of submerged timber. Also, if you're into tailrace fishing, just drive to the dam, which is immediately across the river from the city of Gainesville.

MORE TAILRACES
Whenever you hear about the fantastic catfishing on "Lake Mitchell," I'd wager that most folks are actually talking about the tailrace below Mitchell Dam. If that's the case, they're really describing the upper end of Lake Jordan. The same thing is true for a lot of Wheeler Lake fishing stories: The best catfishing is below Wheeler Dam, which is actually part of Wilson Lake.

This isn't to say that wetting a line at Mitchell and Wheeler lakes is a waste of time, because it surely isn't. It's just that two of the state's best tailraces are on Jordan and Wilson. OK -- the one below Lay Dam, which is indeed Mitchell Lake, is pretty popular as well. To be fair, just about all the tailraces on the Coosa and Tennessee rivers are catfish magnets!

But of all the ones with which I'm familiar, the best is below Mitchell Dam in Lake Jordan. I've lost track of the number of photos I've seen of men holding beefy blue cats weighing 40 pounds or more, so this is where I'd go to target big blues. Wheeler's tailrace on Wilson Lake seems to yield more channel cats, and the occasional flathead. The best bait below any of them is live shad, which beats Spam hands down, as well as night crawlers.

An interesting thing about Wilson's channel cats: Unlike the silvery, speckled-sided specimens most prevalent everywhere else, the ones here are so dark as to appear almost black.

Perhaps the most-used method of fishing for tailrace cats is bottom-bumping, which involves tying a leader with the hook about a foot above a hefty piece of lead tied to the end of the main line. Many shapes of sinkers are used, but a lot of pros at this prefer slender, pencil-shaped weights that are less likely to snag.