Trout in Georgia
Dateline 08/23/99
The first time I went trout fishing, I almost drowned! I was in college in Athens and read about catching trout in the tailwaters below the dam at Lake Hartwell, about an hour's drive away. One morning I didn't have any classes - or skipped them - and headed toward the honey hole I had read about.
I had never caught trout before, so had no idea what to do. I stopped at a small bait store near the dam to find out. They told me to use a small Mepps Spinner or corn. While buying a can of Green Giant Nibblets corn, a couple of kids came in with an ice chest full of rainbows. They told me the hatchery truck had just dumped a load of fish in the river and I should turn off the main highway and go to a steel bridge about three miles below the dam to fish. They warned me to be careful, a fisherman had drowned there a few days earlier.
When I got to the bridge, I immediately fell in love with it. The river was a couple of hundred yards wide and it was nothing but rocks with riffles, runs and pools in them. The water was shallow and the current slow - I did not see how anyone could have drowned. I figured they got in above their waders and panicked, but I was not worried - I was wading in jeans and tennis shoes. I tied on my Mepps #2, put the corn and a stringer in my pocket, and started fishing! I could see the trout follow the spinner but not take it.
Due to my extensive trout knowledge - I had read many articles about them! - I realized these were hatchery trout, used to eating pellet food. The Mepps interested them but did not look like food. The kernels of corn did! I opened the corn and put a kernel on one of the hooks of the spinner, and started getting bites! I waded upstream from the bridge and landed 20 nice trout before lunch.
At lunch time I had worked back down to the bridge and truck, and ate a sandwich. I then waded out to the middle of the river and started fishing. I had caught a couple more trout and was happily fishing away, right in the middle of the wide expanse of rocks, when a car crossed the bridge and blew the horn at me. I turned and waved and went back to casting. But something did not seem quite right. When I looked back up the river, I realized what it was.
There was a cloud of fog over the river, and I could not see the rocks I had been wading on earlier - they were under a mad torrent of water! I reeled in, grabbed my stringer and took off to the bank. When I reached the edge, I was standing on a rock just above the water level and the top of the bank was at chest level. By the time I laid my rod on the bank and unhooked my stringer from my belt loop, I was in water almost to my waist - fast, ice cold water! It was all I could do to hold on to a bush and climb out without being swept away! The rocks in the middle of river where I had been standing just seconds before were under five feet of rushing current!
Power generation had started at the dam and this was the rush of water from turning on the turbines. It had taken three hours to come down the river to where I was fishing. If that car had not blown at me, I would have been caught right in the middle of the river and probably drowned! I was very lucky.
I went back a few times, always checking the power generating schedule, and keeping a close watch on the water. I never caught trout like that again - I had landed 22 that morning before the river rose. Once it came up it was too swift to fish with my Mepps and I did not figure out how to catch them in the current.
When Lake Russell was built below Hartwell, it backed up all the way to the Hartwell dam. There is no wading there now, and the rocks are always under water. The old steel bridge was taken out and the approach to it was left as a fishing pier. They no longer stock trout there, but a few are left from the old stockings of the past, I hear.
I have never tried the trout streams of North Georgia. Maybe I will read Jimmy Jacobs book and give them a try!
Have you ever caught trout - or had a near death experience while fishing? Have any favorite internet sites on fishing for them? Tell me about it. If so, you can also post information about it for others on my message board - you must register to post but can read the board as a guest. Also, if you have thoughts you want to share about this topic, let me know about it at fishing.guide@about.com. for a "Fishtale" or discuss it in the chat room on every night at 8:00 EDT. Tell others what you like.
ONE YEAR AGO THIS WEEK - 08/24/98
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Make or buy a plug knocker and save those expensive lures!
TWO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK - 08/18/97
- 08/25/97 - State and Country Resources List
Lists of resources by state and country will be added starting next week.
Here are my plans, please offer your suggestions..
Check out Coming Next Week - Next week's column topic, contest prize and new additions to the resources lists.
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