Coosawattee from Ellijay to Carters Dam
The Coosawattee River is formed when the Cartecay and Ellijay rivers meet in Ellijay. As the river flows southward it has mostly steep shorelines. This is the result of commercial and industrial developments building up the land to allow for their buildings to be out of the floodplain.
This area is easily fishable by canoe. Wading can be difficult in some places due to some deep areas with the steep riverbanks making passage almost impossible. Once the river passes under Highway 76 Bridge, Gilmer County Park is along one side of the river and fishing is rather easy from this shoreline. The first trout I ever had mounted, a large brood-stock brookie, came from this area of the river. When the river makes a hard turn westward, it picks up speed as it heads toward Carters Lake.
In the 1980s and ’90s I canoed and fished the Coosawattee River many times. Back then the residential development on the shore was evident in many areas with a few homes popping up along the way, but now there are as many as 100 or more homes, cabins and rentals per mile along the once pristine shoreline. The river has a gradient of less than 20 feet per mile with mostly Class I to II whitewater at normal flows. The whitewater can easily become Class III or even Class IV after heavy rains.
The fishing is not as good now as it was 40 years ago. There are some trout in the upper river as well as spotted and redeye bass and bream. Walleyes can be found near where the river dumps into the lake at spawning time in the spring of the year. The river water temperatures in June, July and August get much too warm for trout and it is worse the farther down the river you travel.
Once you are in the Coosawattee in Ellijay it is about 13 miles to your takeout on Carters Lake at Ridgeway Park. In the ’80s there were places along the way for the paddler to stop along the shore, stretch their legs, have a sandwich and drain the bladder if needed. The land was privately owned then, but did not have the abundance of homes as it does now.
The last 3 miles of the river above the lake has some of the best whitewater remaining on the Coosawattee. At normal flow these Class II rapids are fun.
The last major tributary of the Coosawattee above the lake is Mountaintown Creek. This large trout stream originates just south of the Cohutta Wilderness and the floatable section has Class I-II rapids and now is being heavily developed for houses near where it joins the Coosawattee.
After Mountaintown joins the flow, the river picks up speed and this last mile of the river has some good rapids and then there is the lake.
Carters Lake is beautiful, with no homes along the shore and hidden waterfalls in many of the deep coves, and the steep slopes of the mountains
are breathtaking. Carters Dam is the tallest earthen dam east of the Mississippi and the lake has an average depth of 200 feet, and a maximum depth of 450 feet.
As beautiful and beneficial as the lake is, I am sometimes depressed thinking of what the river used to be. Carters Lake now covers some of the best whitewater that has ever existed in the southeast as well as the site of Coosa, the seat of a major Native American chiefdom of the Mississippian culture in 1500s.
Before the dam was built, the river dropped 400 feet in 9 miles, which is a 44 feet per mile average gradient, making some fast whitewater. Within that stretch there are places where the gradient is much steeper. There is one area where the river drops about 50 feet in a third of a mile, translating to 150 feet per mile. This was some extreme whitewater.
Dr. John Dickenson, former life member of the Coosa Valley TU, and I fished the Cartecay watershed on many occasions. John was a close friend of James Dickey, the writer of the book “Deliverance.” He told me that Dickey wrote “Deliverance” based on the Coosawattee River being impounded by Carters
Dam. He said that there were some falls over 40 feet high stretching across the river. The beauty of these falls will never be seen again.
Yes, we have a reliable source of electricity and flood control for the valleys downstream of the dam, but 9 miles of this once untamed, beautiful river are now hidden from view. Yes, I am depressed just thinking about it.
♦ The next meeting of the Coosa Valley Chapter will be Thursday, June 15, at 6:30 p.m. at the Rome Floyd ECO Center. Our guest speaker will be DNR wildlife biologist Allison Melcher, who works in Game Management. Allison will talk about the tasks associated with her position and discuss the overlap with the Fisheries Division. The public is invited.
♦ Our speaker for the July meeting will be Dr. Jay Shelton, a fisheries professor at the Warnell School of Forestry at the University of Georgia. He will be updating us on the status of the Coldwater Fisheries Scholarship established be the Coosa Valley and the Oconee River chapters of Trout Unlimited. He will also cover the Research Scholarship that TU started and update us on the reintroduction of lake sturgeon in the Coosa River watershed.