Fly-fishing for trout had been around long before the 1992 movie “A River Runs Through It” hit the screen. Yet the Robert Redford film featuring Tom Skerritt and Brad Pitt has had a big impact even in the South – far from the movie’s setting in Montana.
North Georgia, East Tennessee and western North Carolina in particular are popular for fly-fishing. But much of the soil in those areas is calcium-deficient, unlike in Montana, where the environment is more conducive to natural trout reproduction.
So state wildlife agencies in the three states annually stock streams with thousands of brown and rainbow trout.
The mountains of Georgia have 4,000 miles of trout streams attracting more than 100,000 anglers annually, and several years ago the Peach State produced a publication entitled “Trout Streams of Georgia.” Copies have been made available at the state’s welcome stations and at Georgia Department of Natural Resources offices.
Many of Georgia’s trout-fishing rivers, such as the Jacks of the Cohutta Mountains and the Toccoa, flow through the Chattahoochee National Forest not far from Chattanooga.