Wilson Dam Tailrace
The Wilson Dam tailrace sits at Tennessee River mile 259.4 below TVA's 1924 Wilson Dam — the head of the Pickwick pool at Florence, famous for big smallmouth, wintering walleye and sauger, and B.A.S.S. Nation spring smallmouth.

Dam Face / Scour Hole
Direct tainter-gate and turbine discharge below Wilson Dam — 137-ft dam height drops 663 MW of net dependable capacity into a deep scour hole with concrete face and current-driven eddies against the lock walls · Vertical jigging spoon for walleye and sauger over suspended shad; 3/8-oz hair jig drifted through the eddy line for smallmouth; heavy bucktail and big swimbait for stripers when TVA is generating · Winter + Spring

Main Lock Wall Eddy
Slack-water eddy along the 110 ft x 600 ft main lock on the Colbert County side — lock lift is 94 ft, the highest single-lift lock east of the Rockies. The auxiliary lock is two 60 ft x 300 ft chambers. Traffic of more than 3,700 vessels annually keeps current shifting · Drop-shot and float-and-fly on the slack-water edge for smallmouth; live shad or medium shiners for stripers; jigging spoon for walleye and sauger in winter · Year-round

McFarland Park Ramp & Tailrace Current Break
City of Florence park at 200 James M. Spain Drive — two extra-wide concrete ramps, Florence Harbor Marina, 110 wet slips, and a direct short-run launch into the tailrace reach immediately below Wilson Dam. Highway 72 bridge pilings downstream at the transition into the main Pickwick pool · Short run upstream to the dam face — the DIY Alabama launch for every Wilson-tailrace trip. Shaky head and swimbait on the bridge piling and rip-rap on the way in or out; crankbait and jerkbait on the rip-rap current edge · Year-round

Colbert (South Bank) Rock Row
Chunk-rock and riprap on the Colbert County / Sheffield side of the tailrace just downstream of the dam — the 'rock row' at Sheffield that Brian Barton names in his Wilson-pool forecasts. Current seams break off the main discharge and hold bait · Live threadfin shad rigged on a medium spinning rod in the current seam (Brian Barton's published Wilson-area live-bait pattern); hair jig for smallmouth; deeper spots on drop-shot and football jig for Sheffield-side spotted bass · Year-round — peak fall and winter

Highway 72 Bridge & Downstream Current Transition
Patton Island / O'Neal Bridge (US-72) bridge pilings and the rip-rap transition where the tailrace eddy water breaks into the wider Pickwick pool — bridge-piling bases, scour holes, and a current seam that fires the night bite through summer · Shaky head and jig-head worm on the piling bases (the Pickwick night bite); swimbait on the rip-rap current edge; deep-diving crankbait on the scour holes; live bait on the channel side for catfish · Summer + Fall

Seven Mile Island Upper Approach
Downstream boundary of the Wilson-tailrace reach — mid-pool island complex where the Pickwick pool opens up. Gravel bars, secondary channels, and the first large main-river flats downstream of the dam's influence · Jerkbait on gravel points; spinnerbait and ChatterBait on back-channel grass; topwater on calm-morning schooling fish in fall · Spring + Fall

Wilson Dam Tailrace — Lake Center