Rainbow Trout On Lake Blue Ridge

There are some big rainbow trout to be caught in Georgia, but many anglers didn’t know they can be caught in Lake Blue Ridge. Trout fishing is also available at Lake Burton and several small lakes where trout are stocked.

It was hours—three or more—and the trout fishing was slow from the git-go. Early March can be that way on the upper Toccoa River, where and when the water temperature is still in the mid-40s under continued-cold nighttime skies that leave frost behind at daylight.

It can be downright cold—oftentimes, in the low 20s—in the north Georgia mountains until late April, and a snowfall can’t be ruled out through early spring. But the weatherman forecast a high of 68 degrees this day, and the bright digital text on the instrument panel of my truck glowed a balmy “32 degrees” as I rolled out the driveway.

For 25 years, the boat behind my truck on a March morning usually was a bass boat. I’d roll out of Suches on my way to Lake Blue Ridge in late winter/early spring to chase down some spotted bass and, perhaps, a couple smallmouth that once held their weight in the clear, mountain lake in Fannin County.

Still, Lake Blue Ridge—a gem of a reservoir just southeast of the town of Blue Ridge, was on my mind as I headed out trout fishing. With 20 years behind me as an outfitter and trout-fishing guide for Reel Angling Adventures (ReelAnglingAdventures.com) in Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina, trout weigh heavy in my fisherman’s lifestyle based in a log cabin in southeast Fannin County’s highlands.

In just 20 minutes, I would meet a couple of anglers for a guided float trip on the Toccoa River, many miles upstream from the reservoir’s headwaters, where I caught my first Lake Blue Ridge trout some 15 years earlier. I stumbled upon it and a few more while casting small crankbaits from the bow of that bass boat in hopes to connect with a smallmouth. After that, I often wondered how many trout made their home in the lake that features fine bass, walleye, white bass and panfish anglers.

Along came 2020, and after guiding trout fishermen on the cold waters of the southern Appalachian Mountains, my now-trout-stained brain was forced to evaluate that consideration.

You see, it was summer that year when Ellijay-based outfitter and fishing guide Eric Crowley of Lake & Stream Guide Service (EllijayFishing.com) shared online quite a few pictures of trout—some of them large trout—caught by his clients under the high, bright skies of the summer season in Lake Blue Ridge’s deep, cold water.

Four years later, Crowley still posts pictures of trout caught in Lake Blue Ridge. A seasoned walleye angler on lakes Blue Ridge and Carters (south of Ellijay), he says he didn’t start fishing for trout until 2020, but he understood the value in revealing the trout he did catch when he was often on the lake looking for walleye.

“During the (COVID) pandemic, we started fishing in new ways, and in May 2020, we caught 100 trout, probably more,” Crowley said. “We saw an uptick of rainbows in the lake, and the only thing I can figure is those fish moved down from the upper Toccoa River, but almost every one of them had some kind of soft plastic in their guts,” Crowley mused, a condition, he added, that told him those trout have been in the lake for some time getting tastes of the soft-plastic jigs, flukes and plastic worms used by local bass fishermen.

“We’ll see schools of trout 15 feet thick and 300 feet long. By our fourth pass, we’re limited out,” said a guide.

The upper reach of the Toccoa River historically holds a good trout fishery—browns and rainbows, wild and stocked—but in many ways it grew into a great trout fishery when the Georgia Department of Natural Resources began wintertime stockings on the so-called “delayed harvest” (DH) stretch of the river. For just under a mile—downstream from the Sandy Bottoms Recreation Area on Old Dial Road to what some local anglers call “the horseshoe” on Shallowford Bridge Road—the river gets a boost in stocked rainbows, browns and brook trout from Nov. 1 through May 15. During that period, fishing regulations call for catch-and-release fishing with single-hook, artificial lures/flies only. It takes place across the cold months of the year, but it’s a grand destination for fly- and lure-fishermen who catch high numbers of trout in the river’s cold wintertime flows.

But high water frequently comes and goes on the Toccoa River with winter rains that sometimes fall in deluges, pushing the river’s water flows up to 6,000 cfs (cubic feet per second). You can read the flows online on the USGS Toccoa River/Dial gauge. High flows don’t necessarily wash trout downstream; they know how to find refuge in eddies and cut banks. But when several thousand trout from 9 to 12 inches are stocked in just a 1-mile stretch of water, they’re gonna move to find food. It’s likely many of those stocked trout move downstream into Lake Blue Ridge, activity agreed upon by me, Crowley and state fisheries officials.

DNR Fisheries Biologist John Damer says the Wildlife Resources Division Fisheries Section knows the lake already supports a small rainbow trout fishery, and he does believe many of those likely are “wash-downs” from upstream.

“I would not rule that out. Most of the fish I’ve seen caught by guides on the lake are generally small,” he says.

But Crowley’s pictures reveal greater promise than pan-sized fish among Lake Blue Ridge’s trout fishery. Take a look at his photo gallery online at Facebook/TroutFishingNorthGeorgia. Scroll past the shots of walleye and stripers caught by Crowley’s anglers to the summertime shots (May/June/July) of trout fishing on Lake Blue Ridge. The catches reveal some large rainbows in the mix.

“They’re often caught as a by-product of walleye fishing, while trolling baits in water 35 feet deep across the points and doubling-up in the creeks in between,” Crowley says. “Eighty percent of them are females and sometimes heavy. We joke and call them ‘Georgia steelhead,’” he added, suggesting the big trout leave the lake to spawn and return to feed well and grow larger.

I like to think Crowley’s “joke” is substantiated by a theory of mine that holds some weight with the fisheries officials. That mid-March guide trip on the upper Toccoa joins many other, similarly timed river trips in my logbook of client fishing trips. Gus and Nick—the father-son duo who joined me on the Toccoa in March—hooked four rainbows from 4 to 7 pounds (among a catch of nearly 30 trout). The two largest fish pulled loose or broke off after long fights on ultralight spinning tackle, but one of the two smaller brutes—at 20 inches long—proved to be a big, spawning female rainbow when it spewed mature, bright-orange eggs when it was netted. Was this “hen” —and other large trout—a rainbow that left the lake to spawn?

DNR is now stocking Lake Blue Ridge with trout and expects them to take advantage of the abundant blueback herring in the reservoir.

My theory for lake-run rainbow trout in the upper Toccoa gained traction in 2020, the same year Crowley saw large trout in his catches in Lake Blue Ridge. COVID restricted people from enjoying so many activities, it was the outdoor recreation—hiking, climbing, paddling, cycling and fishing—that saved the sanity of many. Guided fishing trips boomed statewide that spring, a commercial benefit borne in the wake of COVID lock-downs, and the frequent trips I made on the upper Toccoa in March and April revealed large, heavy, silver-bodied rainbows. This resource further defends Fannin County as the Trout Capital of Georgia, a designation bestowed upon it in 2005 by the Georgia state legislature.

But the trophy-trout fishing action didn’t last. COVID-related lockdowns and shutdowns continued well into 2020 and beyond, but catching large rainbows in the river declined quickly. By the end of April that year, the catch among my guided anglers on the upper Toccoa consisted of the usual 9- to 15-inch rainbows common to Georgia’s public trout fisheries. Where did the big fish go? Continued fishing into early summer on the upper Toccoa (until the water grew too warm to carry on) didn’t yield trophy trout, and those results became routine in 2021, 2022 and 2023. I suspect that by the time this issue of GON is replaced by the May edition, this year’s “Georgia steelhead” will have left the upper Toccoa River and retreated to the depths of Lake Blue Ridge.

Stocking trout in large Georgia lakes is not new. Georgia DNR has stocked brown trout in Lake Burton, near Clayton in Rabun County, for many years and continues to do so. The effort is aimed at reducing the local population of blueback herring —an invasive, exotic fish carried live into many Georgia lakes by anglers who used them as bait for striped bass, hybrid striped bass and spotted bass. At 3 to 5 inches long, the shiny-sided herring are ideal food-fish for growing trout (and other game fishes) to trophy sizes, indeed. Anglers on Lake Burton have recorded many double-digit trout, including the lake record of 12-lbs., 4-ozs. caught by Tom Fox on May 30, 2022.

But it’s something a little different at Lake Blue Ridge.

“We’re stocking rainbows in the lake, in part, because our hatcheries produce more rainbows than other trout species,” Damer says. “We’re stocking fish of at least 10 inches long, upward of 11 inches, and expect them to take advantage of the bluebacks.”

That’s the hope of the state fisheries officials, Damer adds. At issue is the huge population of blueback herring that impact other fishes in the lake, he explained in an interview many years ago when his department determined herring that appeared in Georgia lakes in the late ‘90s can impact the populations of walleye and white bass. Mature herring that can measure up to 12 inches long inhabit the same water—by temperature and depth—where walleye and white bass spawn, Damer told me, and they feed heavily on the fry and young-of-the-year of those game fishes. Their impact reduces those fish populations.

At the deep pool within a mile of the dam, DNR in December and January stocked trout in Lake Blue Ridge for the first time, releasing nearly 14,000 rainbows by boat, adding to the existing but uncounted, and presumably low, trout population in the lake.

“We hope to see those trout grow to 15 to 18 inches long in the first year of feeding on the blueback herring,” said DNR trout stocking coordinator John Lee Thomson. “That’s the size they switch to eating vertebrates, other fish, rather than invertebrates. And we have 10,000 to 15,000 trout on the list for stocking in 2024. We’ll continue to stock for three years and then re-evaluate the program, which is intended to see people catch fish.”

Fishing success will be monitored, Damer adds, by sampling fishing surveys from local anglers.

Crowley says he fishes Lake Blue Ridge about 100 times in his summer season in April, May and June, targeting both walleyes and trout.

“The trout appear to be very pelagic in the lake,” Crowley points out. “Schools of trout move from structure to structure, following big balls of bait… the herring.”

So, Crowley moves with them, using the fishfinder on his 24-foot, center-console Carolina Skiff to zero-in on the depth at which to fish. It makes a great platform for taking as many as six anglers fishing at a time.

“I see schools of bait the size of a pickup truck. The trout surround the bait and feed on them from all sides,” he says. “They eat and swim, eat and swim… so, they push the bait around for hours until the bait eventually goes deep. We’ll see schools of trout 15 feet thick and 300 feet long. By our fourth pass, we’re limited out. It can be a bloody, disastrous mess!”

Particularly for reservoir trout, it’s all about the baitfish and lures that imitate them. On Lake Blue Ridge, that bait is blueback herring.

Herring are like steroids for fish, high in nutritious oils and protein. Crowley uses bluebacks in the 3- to 5-inch range and dead-drifts the hooked bait among the live fish displayed on his sonar from 10 to 30 feet deep. The method resembles “mooching,” a style of fishing among some anglers who fish for landlocked salmon—or kokanees—on big reservoirs out West.

“We use a double-hook rig on the herring—sometimes, it’s nightcrawlers—add some weight, and dead-drift with the baitfish,” Crowley explains. “It’s simple and what the average angler can do without spending thousands on fishing gear.”

Crowley’s setup includes 10-lb. braided line and monofilament leaders 6 feet long. The weight—up to 1 ounce—is Carolina-rigged… threaded onto the main line and separated from the leader by a barrel swivel. He sets up multiple rods on any given drift.

Other methods Crowley puts to work on the lake’s trout include trolling small crankbaits until he marks the fish on the fishfinder and stops to spoon them.

“Vertical jigging spoons… yeah, that works, too,” he says. “And there’s a bite you can get on the dock lights at night, sometimes. Guys are also catching trout on jerkbaits when they’re up (on or near the surface) and active.”

By June, Crowley says, he marks Lake Blue Ridge trout deep—85 feet deep or more where many anglers would never fish, but that deep water in the pool of the lake is enriched. Working cooperatively with the Georgia DNR, the Tennessee Valley Authority installed a suspended oxygen diffuser line in the pool many years ago to improve the dissolved oxygen level of the water discharged into the Toccoa River from Blue Ridge Dam. The program supports the river’s trout fishery that stretches north to the Tennessee state line. Coincidentally, the dissolved oxygen levels favorable to trout—at 6 parts per million, Damer says, also is favorable to blueback herring. Those conditions are good up to a couple miles from the dam.”

“The (lake’s) pool is like an aquarium,” Crowley concurs. “There’s not much of a thermocline, the temperature is perfect, it’s oxygen-rich, and there’s bait everywhere. It’s loaded with 20-inch fish, and with DNR stocking, there’s just going to be more and more of them. Once those ‘bows get 14 to 16 inches long, there’s no predator out there that’s going to eat them. They’re going to eat herring, which will put a couple pounds of weight a year on them. There’s going to be some real monsters in coming years. Maybe, they’re already there!”

Georgia Small-Lake Trout Fishing

Before Lake Burton—and now Lake Blue Ridge—was stocked with trout, Lake Lanier was stocked with rainbow trout. That Lanier stocking program ended in the 1990s when water quality (lower oxygen levels deep within the lake) was impacted in the 30,000-acre impoundment on the Chattahoochee River by upstream development.

Georgia also has long provided its anglers with put-and-take trout fishing in many other places, including the Chattahoochee, Toccoa and Tallulah rivers and many other streams in those watersheds.

Georgia also has stocked rainbow trout in small lakes in several locations across north Georgia, where anglers enjoy relatively simple fishing that often includes full stringers (daily limit of eight fish) from early spring into early summer:

• Dockery Lake, Lumpkin County

• Black Rock Lake, Rabun County

• Nancytown Lake, Habersham County

• Rock Creek Lake, Fannin County

• Vogel Lake/Lake Trahlyta, Union County

• Lake Winfield Scott, Union County

Stocking frequencies are posted at georgiawildlife.com/fishing/trout.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

• Eric Crowley, Lake & Stream Guide Service, Ellijay: 706.669.4973; EllijayFishing.com.

• Bob Borgwat, Reel Angling Adventures, Suches: 770.827.6657; ReelAnglingAdventures.com.