Originally published over on Wired2Fish by Jason Sealock
Many anglers call Alabama the first home and several of us that have never lived their but have fished its many great fisheries call it our second home. There are a few states in the union that offer such a diverse variety of fisheries and high quality fishing for multiple species of bass and other game fish. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Minnesota to name a few hold very special places in our heart because they offer great largemouth, smallmouth, spotted bass and other game fish fishing in many diverse fisheries.
Last year we got to experience a couple of new Alabama fisheries for the first time and since have learned a great deal about them from fishing and other great anglers that have been fishing them most of their lives. We’ll highlight several Alabama fisheries in Visit Fish but we’re going to start with one that is not likely a top pick for a lot of anglers, but it might be after delving into what makes it such a unique fishery.
H. Neely Henry Lake was impounded when the Neely Henry Dam project completed in the 1960s. It was first of the Alabama Power Company’s many dam projects on the Coosa River in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. The dam was named for a high-ranking executive in Alabama Power and thusly so was the fishery it created along the Coosa River.
The fishery is roughly 77 miles long with 332 miles of shoreline (a key number as we’ll later see) but it’s only 11,900 acres. Which means it’s a very long, windy and narrow fishery relatively speaking with some windy creeks stemming from the inundation of the river and surrounding hollows.
Read the rest over on Wired2Fish >