MARTINO: What happened to soft craws?

Fishing and bait choices get center stage in this account anchored on the Tennessee River, described as a 652-mile waterway that forms major reservoirs including Kentucky Lake, Watts Bar and Guntersville. The writer focuses on tailwaters below large northern Alabama dams—Wilson, Wheeler and Pickwick—where fishing directly under concrete structures can be productive but requires caution around turbine and flood-gate outflows. They say many anglers target slab crappies, bass and catfish, while bluegills, redear and even hybrid striped bass also appear. For catching “almost everything,” they rely on live soft craws, typically fished with a lightly hooked tail and a slip-sinker rig adjusted to current speed. The article adds that soft craws can’t be sold or purchased in Tennessee, and that availability has become harder over recent years.