Southeastern Anglers

The Toccoa trout fishery runs fourteen miles from TVA’s Blue Ridge Dam downstream to the Tennessee state line, water reached from Blue Ridge and McCaysville on the Georgia side and Copperhill on the Tennessee side. Trips are run as single-boat days with one or two anglers, and no more than two boats go out on the river in a day because the water is modest in size. Rainbows and browns run eight to eleven inches through most of the river with trophy fish to twenty-six inches in it. February through June fishes best, when spring hatches are on and flows suit floating: winter stoneflies carry into early March, caddis start in March, Hendricksons come in April and sulphurs from May, with nymph and streamer work filling the gaps between hatches. Dam releases can take the river from a gentle flow to unwadeable quickly, so release schedules are watched before and during every trip.

The Clinch is the other tailwater on the books here, a cold river just north of Knoxville in Tennessee whose water rarely climbs much above sixty degrees. Rainbows there run ten to thirteen inches with fifteen to eighteen inch fish turning up regularly, and the river is best known for producing good numbers of large brown trout; the state record, a fish of roughly twenty-eight pounds, came out of it. Midges, black fly, sow bugs, scuds and small caddis pupa make up the food base, and a strong sulphur hatch runs from late March through June. March through August and October through November fish best. A protected slot limit applies on the tailwater, and when Clinch flows are wrong the Holston is the alternative that gets fished instead.