Fly Fishing For Chattahoochee Trout On The River Through Atlanta

When a guy shows up to trout fish and his only “equipment” consists of a pair of old Nike tennis shoes that he calls wading shoes, the Orvis guys better wade for safer environs.

My guide, Chris Scalley, poked fun at my wading shoes, made me put my baitcasting outfit back in the truck and handed me a fly rod. Luckily, Chris is an excellent teacher, and not only on how to work a fly rod and catch trout on the Chattahoochee River tailwater section… Chris is also an expert on the threats to this unique trout fishery, the most southern big-water trout fishery in the country.

Chris fishes out of a traditional “drift boat,” a high-sided river boat with a deep-V hull. We launched the boat at Abbotts Bridge off Highway 120 in Duluth and drifted downsteam for my lesson on fly casting, trout catching, and river protection.

Between the Highway 20 bridge downstream to Medlock Bridge (Highway 141) is a 15-mile stretch where only artificial lures are allowed. No live bait or processed food type baits are allowed. Abbotts Bridge where we started is about five miles north of Medlock.

“This river is ideal to learn how to fly cast,” Chris said. “The river is really wide so you don’t have to worry about your backcast, and it is stocked with plenty of trout.”

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Chris started me with a No. 16 black gnat, a very small dry fly. If you’re new to the fly-fishing game, dry flies float and wet flies sink. Generally, dry flies are far easier for a novice to use because you can see the trout take the fly. With wet flies you’ll either have to use a strike indicator, a small piece of yarn that acts like a bobber, or you’ll have to feel the trout hit or see your line jump.

“If you see a fish rise, try to cast on top of the fish,” Chris said. “We call it the hit-’em-in-the-head technique.”

There weren’t many fish rising that evening, and Chris told me to try to cast near the many blowdowns that line the river banks.

“It’s a good idea to go with a variety of flies while starting out a fishing trip. Try to get a feel for what the fish want,” he said.

With that in mind, Chris was casting a double presentation of two different flies — an Adams Royal Wulff with a black ant dropper tied a few inches behind.

Chris Scalley with a brown trout that hit a No. 10 Woolly Worm during our trip to the Chattahoochee River last month. On the GON-TV camera is editor Brad Gill for a show that aired June 17, 1999.

As we began to slowly drift downriver, Chris got me started with some basic fly-casting instruction.

“The best way to start out a cast is to be in control of the cast from the very beginning. When you go into your backcast, raise up slowly until you get to the end of the fly line, then accelerate. You punch up and back toward the treeline behind you.

“You want to maintain a straight path between your back and forward cast. You’re throwing down and forward at the fish, and the exact opposite — back and up toward the treeline, and you’re maintaining a straight line between your back and forward casts straight over your rod tip.”

He cautioned me to avoid using too much wrist on my fly cast, which will wear you out after several hours.

“Use more of your forearms, more of your shoulder,” Chris said. “Lower your tip to the surface — that extends your wrist, locks your wrist forward. Now keep your wrist locked and keep your elbow in close to your side. This is a good exercise to learn how to let the rod do the work.”

It was apparent that the trout weren’t going to rise much the evening we fished, so Chris switched to No. 10 Woolly Buggers on both of our rods. The No. 10 Woolly Bugger, also called a Woolly Worm, is a large wet fly.

“This Woolly Worm has a red tail, it’s weighted, it’s got a brown body with the grizzly hackle — it’s just a good, general, all-purpose fly for this river. This brown tends to imitate a little bit of everything.

“A lot of times you need to move this fly to entice a strike,” Chris said. “Usually when you’re fly fishing, you have to get this natural, perfect drift. But this time of year stripping line to give the fly some movement helps.

“Use long, rapid strips,” Chris said, “and it’s real important that you point the rod at the fly, that way the fish tends to set the hook on itself.”

After switching to the Woolly Bugger, Chris quickly caught two 9-inch “stocker” trout, one a rainbow and the other a brown.

A little farther downstream the slack water sped up over a shallow gravel flat above some rapids, and Chris anchored the boat so we could climb out into the chilly water to wade-fish the run thoroughly. He explained what made that stretch particularly good.

“On this side of the river you’ve got this gravel bar coming up, and the river kind of funnels into this other side, so the fish are going to be concentrated in a smaller channel like this. They’re not going to lay out here in the open (on the shallow gravel bar), especially on a bright day like this where they’re exposed to birds of prey and fishermen. Now later in the evening they’ll move onto these gravel bars to forage because it’s great habitat for insects on these gravel bars.

“The more diverse your stream bottom, the better the habitat for insects, and that’s what draws the fish in. Good polarized glasses are helpful, and reading water is important. I’m looking for rocks and cover underneath the water. I tell my clients to look for any area where you see transition — a shadow on the surface, rocks, gravel bars. Anywhere you see change, you tend to find trout in those areas.”

Chris said the best time to fish the Chattahoochee tailwater is during low water conditions. The river will run high and muddy after a decent rain and you can forget about catching trout. When the water is released from Buford Dam, the fishing gets more difficult than during low-water conditions.

An appeal to fly fishermen on the Chattahoochee below Buford Dam is that stocked trout survive and grow. These fish, called holdovers, can grow to impressive sizes like this 17-inch brown caught by a client of Chris Scalley. Brown trout are also reproducing in the river.

“The rising water changes things for the fish, and they’ll quit feeding for a little while,” Chris said. “Then once it stabilizes high they’ll feed but there’s just too much water to fish.”

The banks of the river are literally lined with blowdowns, and it is this dense, hard-to-fish structure that helps the river grow quality “holdover” trout.

Holdovers are stocked trout that live long enough to develop the characteristics of wild trout. A typical, recently-stocked trout you catch in the Chattahoochee is called a SNIT — a Standard Nine Inch Trout. However, a larger trout is not automatically a holdover. The state occasionally stocks some big trout that had been used for breeding purposes in the hatchery.

“They do put brood fish in here, but you can tell if it’s a brood fish because they’ll get a fungus on their fins, and the fins are worn from being so crowded in the raceways (at the hatchery). Usually you can just tell if it’s a holdover by the fight, and their fins are full and sharp looking,” Chris said.

“When you catch a nice holdover, it’s usually going to be a brown trout. They seem to do better at surviving in the river,” he said.

Chris’s personal best from the Chattahoochee was a 23-inch trout that hit a Rapala, and he also caught a 20-incher on a fly rod. “Both were browns, and both were holdover fish,” he said.

A 20-inch trout from the tailwater will weigh about 4-lbs. The large holdover fish, trout in the 16- to 20-inch range, used to be more common in the artificial-only section the river, and Chris offered his opinion on why they are becoming more rare.

“I think it’s because of a combination of fishing pressure, and that more fish than ever are being stocked so there’s a lot of competition for food among the fish. We know, because we’ve seen it in the past, that the river can grow some impressive fish.”

Chris said most of the larger holdover fish that are caught these days come from hard-to-reach areas of the river that are protected from boat traffic by shoals.

DNR fisheries biologists think that too much catch-and-release could be hurting the river’s ability to grow quality-sized brown trout. A tagging study last summer found that more than 70 percent of the brown trout caught in the tailwater section of the Chattahoochee were released. Brown trout are tough to catch except on flies, and fly fishermen tend to be anglers who appreciate the aesthetics of trout fishing more than the eating of trout, hence they practice catch-and-release.

DNR biologist Lisa Klein said, “We’ve got a bunch of fish that are stuck at this 10- to 12-inch bracket, and they are probably not going to grow much larger unless we weed some of them out.”

Chris still preaches catch-and-release. “You have to ask yourself the question, ‘Do you want to catch fish or eat fish?’ I personally would rather catch fish and most of my clients would rather catch fish. This river can grow fish. During the course of a day, if we float a 5- to 10-mile stretch, we’re going to run into a 16-inch fish. It might break the line or we might only see the fish, but we’ll run into one. That’s what sets this river apart from many rivers in Georgia, the chance to catch a quality fish that the river grew.

“I don’t mind if a client wants to take some fish home to eat, but I urge everyone to release all of the holdover trout they catch. Keep some of the stockers if you want to eat some trout. If you catch a holdover fish, that trout has shown that it can survive in the river and it has a good chance of living and growing for some time.

“If you release a trout, don’t touch the fish,” Chris said. “Trout are more fragile than a lot of warm-water fish like bass. Leave the trout in the water and just reach down with the forceps and grab the fly and shake it loose.”

A recent discovery by biologists studying the Chattahoochee River tailwater section below Buford Dam has Chris and other trout anglers excited.

“DNR has found that brown trout are reproducing in this river,” Chris said. “It’s hard to believe with the water fluctuating like it does and the fact that we’re not really in a natural setting for trout, but they are able to reproduce. About every trip we’ll get into a fish that’s really vibrant, full-finned and very colorful.”

Almost every day Chris is on some stretch of the Chattahoochee tailwater, and he sees first-hand that the unique trout fishery is under assault. To help protect the river and the trout fishing there, Chris started the Chattahoochee Cold Water Tailrace Fishery Foundation, a non-profit group that monitors water quality.

“This river, this great tailwater, is seriously threatened by the growth of Atlanta, and we really need to act fairly quickly. As a guide and a trout fisherman, I’m a stakeholder in the river, and that’s basically why I started the Foundation.

“Our main focus right now is an invertebrate study to sample the insect life in the river. We’ve established five stations along the 30 miles of tailwater from Buford Dam to Peachtree Creek. The insects tell us what kind of shape the ecosystem is in, and we’ll be able to monitor any changes that are occurring with water quality.”

Chris said the biggest threat to trout fishing in the river is the rapid development north of Atlanta.

“Only time will tell how development affects the river, but the immediate effect is siltation. We’re noticing a lot more sediment on the stream bottom, and there’s some insects we don’t see anymore. There used to be a good white cahill mayfly that hatched out here, and I’m convinced that the development is the reason we don’t see them anymore. Insects live on the bottom, and unfortunately that’s where the mud all accumulates.”

As we drifted past the riverside homes of St. Ives subdivision in Duluth, Chris pointed out a freshly-cut tree that once stood right on the river bank, but now lay in the water.

“That’s pretty frustrating,” Chris said. “They buy land with a view of the river, and they clear the understory so they can see the river better, and it causes erosion. There’s a set-back law. Within 50 feet of the river is a buffer — you can’t touch poison ivy, not even a weed. But it’s difficult to enforce.”

The park at Abbotts Bridge closes at dark, and late that evening we were minutes from having to motor back upriver to put the boat on the trailer when Chris put his rod down and guided the boat through a stretch of fast water and rocky shoals.

“Just follow the fly downstream with your rod tip and keep the line tight,” Chris said as he used the oars to navigate the boat through the fast water. Halfway through the shoals a trout nailed my Woolly Bugger, and it was apparent right away that this wasn’t a stocker. Though not much larger than nine inches, the colorful rainbow put up a strong fight in the current.

“That one’s been in the river for a while,” Chris said.

A holdover trout was a perfect way to end an evening of fly fishing on Atlanta’s backyard trout stream.

To set up a guided trout-fishing trip, call Chris Scalley at 770.650.8630, or visit his website https://riverthroughatlanta.com/our-guides/