If you like catching a wide variety of fish, get some soft plastics that look like shad/baitfish in the 2" - 4" range in 1/8 to 1/3 oz jighead weights, and fish the tailwaters below some of your local dams starting in April or so. When the fishing really slows down during the "dog days" of summer, the early morning tailwater bite can be the best thing available, as the cooler water coming from the bottom of the upstream reservoir provides cool, oxygenated water and keeps the fish in that area more active.
I've been on many trips in that environment where i've caught 8 - 10 species of fish in a single trip. I love that type of experience, as you get to see a great cross-section of game fish that Tennessee has to offer.
I generally fish with a medium-weight, 7-foot spinning rod with 8lb test unless I'm going after striped bass (rockfish). With the lighter outfit, I'm typically targeting white bass, smallmouth, largemouth, sauger (cousin to walleye), small stripers, big crappie, and other medium-sized fish. By keeping the setup lighter, you get better casting distance, more bites with the lighter line, and the fights are a blast. When fishing faster-moving water, color patterns with white or pale shades seem to do pretty well. If the current slows, go to natural colors or pumpkinseed/brown/green and down-size baits, as you will get more visual inspection from the fish.
Whne targeting bigger fish like stripers, I use heavy bass fishing or catfish gear, depending on whether I'm using lures or live bait. If the stripers are actively feeding on the surface (often warmer weather in the very early morning), I tie on a big, ugly topwater bait and rip it across the water like I'm trying *not* to catch one. The strikes can be spectacular, and the fights are great fun. 10-12lb test line with a medium-heavy spinning or baitcasting setup matched against a bunch of "schoolie" 3-7 lb stripers can be an absolute hoot - but be warned, you sometimes only have a feeding frenzy like that last only 15-30 minutes before calms. Those small-ish ones are also fair eating on the grill if cooked fresh, but otherwise true rockfish are not especially tasty and valued mostly for sport.
Getting a cast net and becoming proficient at using it can become almost as fun as fishing with the rod - it can be very productive to drift live shiners/shad with medium-sized hooks and little or no weight. Larger weights are used to catch lots of types of fish hanging lower in the water column, but break-offs are common. Still, I've seen some of the biggest fish caught using those types of methods when dropping a big bait down "in a hole".
I'm not a trophy fisherman at all, so most of my tackle recommendations are going to lean towards the small/medium range. I like to catch a larger number of good quality fish, but I'm not really interested in trying to fish all day long after that one elusive trophy smallmouth (or whatever) that bites a 6" crankbait. If you are just getting started in fishing Tennessee, it's hard to go wrong with soft plastic jigs of assorted sizes. Brighter colors should generally be reserved for dam tailraces (with a few exceptions), so I'd steer you towards subtle natural-looking colors when first stocking your tackle boxes. As far as hard baits go, Rapala makes some really quality lures that can catch all sorts of things - for example, the X-rap (which unfortunately keeps getting more expensive) will catch suspended or shallow water fish from Tennessee to the Gulf of Mexico. I would invest in crankbaits in a couple of different color sets that go to several depth ranges - that's a whole different topic in itself.
Hopefully someone in your section of the state could take you on a few ride-alongs to show you some tactics for different species. Your area of the state is a pretty great one to live in when it comes to quality fishing opportunities, so I think you will have a lot of fun adventures in your future.
