Gillikin Adventures: Smith Lake

September 7-10

We took a long weekend and went up to Smith Lake in north Alabama with our friends Joey and Kelsie. Smith Lake is a 21,200 acre lake north of Birmingham that was formed when Alabama Power dammed the Sipsey River. It is 200 feet deep in places. At the base of the dam the water comes out of the bottom of the lake into the Sipsey Fork and because it comes out of the bottom of the lake it is very cold. They stock this creek with rainbow trout every 60 days and this is the only place in Alabama where you can fish for rainbow trout.

We stayed at the Clear Creek campgrounds. We got there at about 7:30 Friday night. After checking in we started to set up the camper. The first that happened was that we locked the keys in the camper. Jason took the door off the hinges and we got the keys out. Then Jason started to brush off the grill and start dinner. As soon as he touched the grill it fell over. Now we had to go back to the office, get a new site, pack up our stuff and move. This however did not hurt my feelings as I did not like our first site. It was a pull-through so we were right on the road. I liked our second spot much better. It was big and secluded and right on the lake. We finally get set up and ate dinner. Joey and Kelsie got there at about midnight and set up their tent behind the camper.

Saturday morning we should have gotten up early to get to the river but that did not happen. Jason caught a bass in the lake while we were eating breakfast.

We went to the river and stopped at the bait store to find out what the trout were biting. We got to the river at about 10:00. It was really pretty, the weather was great and the fish were there, they just weren't biting.

We gave up at 12:00 and went to the dam. After fixing sandwiches for lunch we tried fishing the dam. Same story there. The fish would swim up to the bait then turn around and leave. We waited till 2:00 to see them turn on the dam then headed back to camp.

We fished and swam in the river at our campsite and Jason caught a catfish.

There was a flock? of ducks that came up and were obviously used to being feed. They ate out of our hands and I got to pet them.

That night we cooked steaks and the played spoons. If you have never played spoons you don't know what you are missing. It is a card game but as soon as someone gets four of a kind they grab a spoon and then everyone tries to grab a spoon and like musical chairs there is one less spoon than there are people. There were a few injuries and my cards got pretty beat up but we had a blast.

The next morning we tried to find a place to paddle but they are in the middle of a drought and all the creeks were too low to paddle. So we went out to eat lunch and the Joey and Kelsie headed back home. Jason and I went to a creek and the water was so low that we were able to walk/wade upstream and fish in the deep holes for bass. We each caught a fish but didn't keep them. Then we went back to the dam after a nap but did not have any better luck.