This Urban Creek is NOT what you think

Indexed: 2026-05-21

[00:00:01]All right, we're about to get in the creek and go fishing down here, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Little urban creek right here that I've hit a couple times, but it's been a while. So, I'm going to go in here with a few lures. I got a few bug creature style lures. Real kind of small, kind of targeting bass, pan fish, whatever we catch. And it looks really cool. You wouldn't think this creek's in the middle of Chattanooga. So, let me get my water shoes on, my backpack, my water, couple lures and hooks, and we're going to get in here and check it out.

[00:00:37]Oh, well, this place has changed.

[00:00:45]Take a look. Got to take around. See if there's anybody camping out.

[00:00:51]Look at this creek, though. Look at all this whatever this stuff is in it.

[00:00:59]Look how clear this looks. Gravel, rocky, all this.

[00:01:05]This is kind of I'm like, it's just you wouldn't think there's a place like this right in the middle of businesses and houses and busy roads. Just Oh, there's a nice little bass right there. See?

[00:01:20]Where'd he go?

[00:01:22]He's hanging out right there. Yeah, there he is.

[00:01:25]That's the kind of fish we're looking for. Just little large mouth. Look at that guy. He's sitting right here. He's coming back down.

[00:01:34]Probably eight tender. Look over there's a little hole over there. String's got a good little flow to it. All right. I'm going to put on a little cricket here or rebel hopper flex series. Um we're probably going to go through a few different lures, but the goal is catch bass and pan fish. So, maybe some lures that can kind of be multiecies lures.

[00:01:57]All right, let's get it over there. A little deep pocket in the shade.

[00:02:01]Something ought to come over. Hit that pretty good.

[00:02:09]Oh, there we go. First fish. Did not take long to get us a beautiful red breast. Real bright colored number one.

[00:02:36]Oh, there's one. Okay, there's number two. Another red brush. I haven't seen any bass hit yet. I know they're in here. We already seen one. We know there's probably more in this little deep hole. This deep pocket is probably 2 foot deep. Current coming through. A lot of shade, a lot of grass.

[00:02:56]Yeah, that's that's kind of area that can hold some surprisingly good fish sometimes or or maybe just a lot of fish.

[00:03:04]All right, let's work our way up this creek. And man, like this is knee deep with a good amount of current flowing.

[00:03:11]So there's this is good water supply.

[00:03:14]And this year we're about to get some rain coming in, but we have not had much rain at all. So this creek just stays probably I guess it's springfed. Most most creeks are, but um it just depends on how much water's coming out that spring a lot of times.

[00:03:32]This one looks like it has a good flow to it even when we're basically in some like a drought.

[00:03:42]Oh, there's a little bit of bass in front of me. I've not seen any bigger bass yet.

[00:03:50]There's something.

[00:03:52]What do we got here?

[00:03:56]Rock bass. I don't even remember catching rock bass in here.

[00:04:07]Another species.

[00:04:14]Oh, I didn't know what that was. I heard this noise. It's a bird. Woodpecker right here. I heard it. I thought it was like somebody, but then it moved. I'm like, how did it move?

[00:04:28]This dude's going to town.

[00:04:33]I thought it was a car rattling cuz I heard it on the other side of the creek a second ago. Then I hear it over here.

[00:04:40]I'm like, what is going on?

[00:04:43]Well, I guess it's some kind of woodpecker. That's a little one, though.

[00:04:48]He is hammering away on that.

[00:04:51]I have not seen the bass that I remember seeing before.

[00:04:57]It may be because the water now. I can really tell it's a lot lower.

[00:05:04]Well, birds are loud in here. We're just definitely getting the full nature. Got airplanes going over, cars going by, birds, fish.

[00:05:18]Just a cool little area right in the middle of town.

[00:05:25]A good one right there. Oh, there's definitely some over here. They're in the this slack area in the shade over here.

[00:05:33]Okay, I see those bass. I don't know what they are doing. Those bass I saw coming up, they're still sitting in the same spot looking at the bank. So, to me, I feel like they're looking for little bitty bait fish. Let's see if we can get the dragonfly close to them. And what do they do?

[00:05:54]Right over top of them.

[00:06:00]Nobody wants it. Uh oh, here comes one.

[00:06:03]Nope. Oh, they should be crushing that.

[00:06:07]Take a look on the iPhone now. That biggest one's maybe 12 in. The other ones are 8 10 in. But they're all just sitting there looking like like they're looking for bait.

[00:06:21]But I can't get them to There's more over there.

[00:06:24]Usually I see more bass than that, though. So, we still got to go downstream some more.

[00:06:33]Oh, we got hammered by something.

[00:06:39]Wasn't These aren't bass.

[00:06:46]There's a fish. There is the fish. What is it?

[00:06:51]Well, there we go. We got our first large mouth.

[00:06:55]had to come down here.

[00:06:57]I got a little uh Craig Lakes finesse little creature bug. I wanted something a little bigger on there. See if I can get the bass to bite. Those ones back there still wouldn't bite it. I get down here and boom, right away.

[00:07:20]But we're in deeper water and it's a little murky and I need to make need to kind of cover the water.

[00:07:27]Feel like there could be a fish coming out anywhere. I've seen some sunfish, but the uh there's got to be bass in here.

[00:07:40]Well, we got a tree down.

[00:07:55]Well, I don't know how that happened.

[00:07:57]I guess somebody could have hung it up there. Somebody must have hung There's no way two two tires get out on the same limb.

[00:08:08]This water is low and I'm just keeping on going. I haven't seen the bass and I've been saying that and I keep looking for them and they just I don't know where they're at.

[00:08:22]What in the world?

[00:08:26]Now we got two dumpsters down here.

[00:08:30]How Oh, that was a good hit. That's getting a little bit deeper right here.

[00:08:37]How did they get here?

[00:08:44]Oh, finally something got hugged, I think. And it's not even a bass.

[00:08:51]I've been waiting this whole section getting hammered by a little fish throwing this little spinner bait.

[00:08:57]And does a bass come out? No.

[00:09:00]But finally got a nice spread breast. I think I'm just going to have to make a little tweak, but I'm not going to do it yet. I'm going to get down that way with this spinner bait that I'm throwing, which isn't even a big one. It's a small one, before I make a change.

[00:09:15]And then when I have to come back, I'll make a change.

[00:09:32]Oh my goodness. Where did he come from? Oh.

[00:09:37]Uh, we lost it. That was our first bass.

[00:09:39]Or at least one on the spinner bait. Oh, he was right. Came out. Just popped out in front of me.

[00:09:58]There we go. Finally something solid.

[00:10:03]And it's a red wrist. It's all right. I guess I'll take them.

[00:10:10]I will take them for the day.

[00:10:12]Just never know what the next thing is going to be.

[00:10:27]This may be as far as I can go. I think I had to do this once before. the the bottom is getting so soft.

[00:10:35]I'm not sure why this transition here.

[00:10:40]I don't know if I can walk the creek bank anymore. Just filled it in with sticks and debris and stuff. It's right where it starts to get deep though. I guess it's cuz uh there's not much not near as much current. It's getting really uh the bottom's getting really soft. There's like a not much of a current right there. I know there's fish down there somewhere cuz I've come up the creek before. But for today, we're turning back. We've been out for two hours on this creek and it's been a lot of walking. I got a long way to go back, but um it was different. Like why I like coming to these creeks every time they change. I think I I thought I was going to come here and catch a bunch of bass that I was like certain of it and then I just The bass aren't here. It's I mean there's a few but usually there's just a bunch of 12 13 14 inches and this year's totally different but sometimes it'll takes a while. Sometimes they might get in here in the summer rains and then the fall and they move up and they grow.

[00:11:42]These fish grow pretty quick from they grow from in a year a lot of bass grow from about an inch to 8 inches in like a year. So I think from eight up um I think 12 or something like that. So they can go from like these little 8 inches to a bunch of 12 inches. That's a big difference by time um you know within a year or something like that, maybe a few months. But they eat here so fast in the um summertime. They grow really fast spring and summer in here eating bugs.

[00:12:09]But we are going to change lures. I got to get some rocks out of my shoes and we're going to go back upstream now.

[00:12:15]We're searching for just any kind of pan fish we can catch.

[00:12:27]And let's get this thing started. First cast.

[00:12:33]Little rock bass.

[00:12:36]Wow. We're in a little shady area. Got the uh the Zman um I forget what this called. Flashback. It's a mini ChatterBait. 116th ounce. The 1/16th ounce one has the smallest hook. You can get the flashback in 1/8 ounce has a little bit bigger hook. Depends on what you're wanting to use it and throw. So, this 1/16th ounce with a little Bobby Garland on it. Can catch a lot of fish and I still can cast it fine with a either on a light or ultral light setup.

[00:13:13]It works really good.

[00:13:17]Boom. Too easy. Too easy.

[00:13:23]I was set on trying to catch the bass, but now that we're going back upstream, I'm going to catch everything.

[00:13:31]Get out here in the sun where you can see this sunfish. Another red breast.

[00:13:35]Just an average size one. There's probably a thousand of these between here and the truck. That's two different species coming back so far. Red breast or rock bass. We'd already caught those two species, but we'll see what else we've got. A largemouth, rock bass, red brass.

[00:13:54]Uh, let's see what else we can get.

[00:14:02]And we got something different. Oh, I didn't know these were in this creek.

[00:14:08]There's only a few creeks around here that I catch these in. That's a spotted sunfish.

[00:14:13]Maybe the first time I've ever caught one out of this creek. There's a few creeks in this area that I do catch them, but around me, this is probably one of the only places there are to get further south. So, it's kind of neat to catch that spotted sunfish.

[00:14:31]Interesting. That's what's fun about the downsizing.

[00:14:34]You really can pick off a lot of species that you just might not even know are there.

[00:14:44]Oh, there's Oh, right.

[00:14:47]Another red breast.

[00:14:51]They got one of the bigger mouths of the sunfish around here. And they're one of the most aggressive fish in the creeks throughout the summertime, I guess, other than large mouth. Large mouth usually can be more aggressive, but there's more red breast in these creeks.

[00:15:11]We got a shopping cart, some tires, a baseball, some kind of roof rack, a What is that? Some kind of siding or something? I thought it was a tailgate.

[00:15:25]Pair of sunglasses, another tire, a can, a cone, all these things. It's um things that run out of people's houses and off the road. And whenever it rains, just things are going to get funneled down in here.

[00:15:42]That's just part of streams that live in towns.

[00:15:46]It's almost impossible to I guess it is impossible to keep everything out of it cuz all the roads that cross over uh just all the houses around. It's not intentional most time I don't think. Oh, sinking in. Goodness.

[00:16:04]had a bass on and a was in a sinkhole.

[00:16:13]Oh, that feels a little better. What is that? Is that a No, the rock bass. See what's crazy? Like, we just saw all this trash. Look, all this trash. All kinds of stuff. All kinds of stuff. Guess what lives in here? Rock bass. They're supposed to be like a sign for how healthy a stream is. And I've already caught three or four today. We got all these fish living in here. It's crazy how nature just can clean up things that we we think are just nasty and dirty, but nature has a way of just cleaning up and taking care of it. Now, is it the best to have all this trash in here? No.

[00:16:52]But people got to live somewhere. I mean, I like living somewhere. I don't want to have to move my house just because I can't because in case trash or something gets on it and we like driving places so there's a give and take for sure and a lot of this trash just gets washed away. You can clean it out and it'll be right back.

[00:17:11]It's going to get washed downream into places.

[00:17:15]But you know that's just the reality of it. I like to just I don't know. It's not something you want to dwell on. You want to but it's also something you're like oh man how can I solve that? I don't know if you can solve it. There's measures you can take to be careful.

[00:17:28]And a lot of people say um like people that fish and leave their cans behind and the worms like that's that's the least amount of trash that's gets in creeks and in the rivers. It's really just stuff coming from residential areas. It's why you go to these mountain streams, there's like, oh, why they're so pretty up there. Yeah, there's no houses up there. No trash up there.

[00:17:51]Hopefully, we can keep a lot of those uh some of those national parks that way.

[00:17:56]Got you.

[00:17:58]We got another red breast. Yep, it is.

[00:18:01]Oh, it's a nice one. Pretty. Oh, that one is a really colorful one.

[00:18:19]What's that? What's that? There's a bunch of little fish in that little hole. Kept getting pecks. little largemouth. These are the guys I think that in about about the fall, they're probably twice the size of this just by eating in here. There's so much little stuff for them to eat. They can just feast.

[00:18:42]Oh, there we go.

[00:18:48]Hey, there's our first bluegill.

[00:18:50]It's kind of odd. I fig we done caught several of those.

[00:18:54]I've seen a lot of little ones. This is pretty little, but even I've seen a lot even littleer ones.

[00:19:05]Little Some of these are little uh mosquito fish. All these little ones there.

[00:19:16]What's that? What's that?

[00:19:19]Another red breast.

[00:19:21]There's plentiful in here. What you don't see though is all the fish that are just a little bit smaller that are nipping at it and not getting hooked.

[00:19:29]Every cast I bet I get average two to three little nips.

[00:19:34]It's just millions of little fish in this area throughout here.

[00:19:48]Ah, I saw you, dude. Another species, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's a red ear.

[00:19:56]So, another sunfish species right here. Back almost back to the bridge.

[00:20:03]I'm just thinking I was just thinking here about how if I come back. That's a pretty healthy one. There little guy. If I come back here in say 3 months, May, so June, July, August, middle of August or end of August, how much bigger all these fish are going to be? Like everything is going to be probably 10 to 25% bigger. Like mo some of the fish aren't going to get any bigger, but a lot of these sunfish are probably going to be bigger. They're going to grow at least a say half an inch or more. These bass are going to probably going to grow two or three inches. like everything's going to be.

[00:20:39]That's why like a lot of times these creeks I do like fishing them in the fall like August, September, and October, right before it gets cold and you can like have some amazing days cuz everything's a little bit bigger, a little hungrier. And right as the weather starts to cool down, these fish, they get aggressive, you know, as soon as the days start getting shorter basically in these streams. So these things, they change a lot. It's really cool to see. Had a fun time out here today seeing the changes.

[00:21:13]Oh, holy cow.

[00:21:19]Come on, dude. I caught a little fish and a little bass came over like he was going to eat it. He's right in front of me.

[00:21:26]That was crazy. He was I don't I don't think he showed up on camera. I don't know if it did or not, but um I hooked a little little sunfish in a bass that barely bigger than it. Came at it like it was going to I don't know what it was going to do.

[00:21:43]All right, I'm going to get out of here.

[00:21:45]My setup ended it off with the um flashback chatterbait 1/16th ounce. I was using six lb mono.

[00:21:54]This is just one of my more more multiecies setups. She can kind of handle a little bit, but really nice rods. I like these lose rods. This is the the light series, but this is actually a 6'4 light action fast. So, it's a light action rod. Um, this is the Johnny Morris reel. I think it's like a thousand size. Like I said, I got six lb mono. Kind of can do a little bit of everything. Multi-purpose and uh multiecies style setup. So, all right. Time to get out of China.