Chattooga River Fishing Guides and Conditions, Georgia

About the Chattooga River

The Chattooga is the rare eastern river that looks the way it did a century ago. Designated Wild and Scenic in 1974, it runs fifty-seven miles from the North Carolina mountains along the Georgia and South Carolina border to Lake Tugaloo, with no roads, no houses and no development within a quarter mile of either bank. It is best known to the public as whitewater, Sections III and IV are national-caliber rafting, and known to anglers as a wild trout river that asks something of you.

Fishing centers on the upper river. Section 00 and Section I above Highway 28 hold wild brown and rainbow trout and, in the small feeder streams, southern Appalachian brook trout. The Delayed Harvest section near Burrells Ford is managed as catch-and-release with artificials from November through mid-May and is the most reliable place on the river to find numbers of fish. Below Section II the river turns into serious whitewater, and redeye bass mix with trout in the warmer lower reaches.

The Clayton gauge is the reference for both anglers and boaters. Readings in the low hundreds of cfs mean clear, wadeable trout water in the upper sections; a couple of thousand means the whitewater sections are running hard and the fishing is off. The river responds fast to mountain rain and drops nearly as fast, and the trails in and out of the gorge are steep enough that a rising river is a real problem.

Clayton is the Georgia base, with Highlands and Cashiers over the North Carolina line and Walhalla on the South Carolina side. A Georgia or South Carolina license fishes the border water; check which side you are standing on.

Access

Burrells Ford: the main upper-river access, campground and the Delayed Harvest water.
Highway 28 Bridge: the boundary between the upper fishing water and Section II.
Sandy Ford and Earls Ford: gravel-road access to the middle river.
Bull Sluice at Highway 76: the Section III put-in and a well-known overlook.
Chattooga River Trail: long walk-in access along the Georgia bank.
Ellicott Rock Wilderness: headwater access where three states meet.
Woodall Shoals and Long Creek: South Carolina side accesses on the lower river.

Seasons

Year-round on the main river; the Delayed Harvest section runs November through mid-May.
March through May: the best hatches and comfortable water levels.
June through August: warm afternoons; fish the headwaters and early mornings.
September through November: cool water, wild brown trout on the move, the quietest months in the gorge.