Fly fishing

Tennessee

Live flows, weather, snowpack, and stocking for 9 rivers and creeks across 5 regions.

Rivers: 9
Regions: 5
Fly shops: 11

Tennessee runs two completely different trout fisheries, and knowing which one you're standing in changes everything about how you read the water. In the mountains — the Great Smokies and the Cherokee National Forest along the eastern edge of the state — the fishing is small, wild freestone water: tumbling boulder streams that hold native brook trout up high and wild rainbows and browns lower down, fished with short casts, light tippet, and a lot of rock-hopping. The Little River in the Smokies is the marquee, but the Tellico and the upper Hiwassee country give you miles of pocket water that see a fraction of the crowds once you walk past the road.

The other Tennessee is tailwater country, and it's some of the best in the East. The Tennessee Valley Authority and the Army Corps of Engineers stack cold, bottom-release dams across the eastern half of the state, and the reaches below them — the South Holston, the Clinch, the lower Hiwassee, the Watauga, the Caney Fork — grow big, wild browns and stocked rainbows in water that stays trout-cold through an Appalachian summer. The catch is generation: these dams run on a hydro-peaking schedule, and when the turbines spin up the river can go from a wadeable ribbon to an unfishable torrent in under an hour. The generation schedule matters as much as the hatch chart, which is why the release data sits front and center on every tailwater page here. The South Holston's year-round sulphur hatch and its slot-limit wild browns are the flagship, but every one of these tailwaters fishes on the same rule: check the water before you check the weather. TWRA (the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency) sets the regulations, with special slot and catch-and-release stretches layered onto the best of the tailwaters.

Stocking: recent & upcoming hatchery plantsFull Tennessee stocking schedule →

Cherokee National Forest

2 rivers

The southeastern mountains along the Tennessee–North Carolina line. The Tellico is stocked-and-wild freestone deep in the national forest; the Hiwassee runs cold out of TVA's Apalachia Dam through a scenic gorge, mixing a cold tailwater up top with a big pocket-water river below.

Hiwassee River

Tellico River

Cumberland Plateau

1 river

The western edge of Tennessee's trout range, where the Cumberland Plateau breaks toward Middle Tennessee. The Caney Fork below Center Hill Dam is Nashville's tailwater — cold Army Corps bottom-release water that grows big rainbows and browns a short drive from the city, all of it keyed to the Center Hill generation schedule.

Caney Fork River

East Tennessee

1 river

The Ridge-and-Valley country north of Knoxville. The Clinch below Norris Dam is a classic TVA tailwater — cold, clear, and famous for the trophy brown trout it grows on a slot limit, with fishing that lives and dies by the Norris release schedule.

Clinch River

Great Smoky Mountains

2 rivers

The freestone heart of Tennessee trout fishing — the streams draining the Tennessee side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Little River and the Little Pigeon are classic Appalachian pocket water: wild rainbows and browns in the mid and lower reaches, native brook trout in the headwaters, all fished small and close.

Little Pigeon River

Little River

Northeast Tennessee

3 rivers

The Tri-Cities tailwater country and the ridges around it. The South Holston and the Watauga are two of the best wild-brown tailwaters in the East, both fished on TVA generation schedules, while the Nolichucky is a big freestone river running out of the Unaka Mountains with as much smallmouth and whitewater as trout.

Tennessee