Tennessee

Tennessee is the unlikely home of some of the finest trout fishing in the American South, a product of cold TVA tailwater releases and the high-elevation streams of the Great Smoky Mountains and Cherokee National Forest. The state's trout fisheries range from world-class tailwaters with trophy-sized fish to intimate mountain freestone streams draining some of the most biodiverse forest in the Northern Hemisphere.

The South Holston River below South Holston Dam in northeastern Tennessee is the crown jewel of Southern tailwater fishing — a cold, fertile stream with extraordinary insect populations and catch rates that rival any trout river in the country. The prolific sulfur hatches on the South Holston are legendary, producing surface feeding activity of an intensity rarely seen outside the limestone rivers of Montana or Pennsylvania. The Watauga River tailwater below Wilbur Dam runs parallel to the South Holston and offers similar quality with slightly different character. The Hiwassee River in the Cherokee National Forest is a broader tailwater known for massive brown trout and consistent year-round flows.

Above the tailwaters, the streams draining the Great Smoky Mountains National Park represent some of the most pristine wild brook trout habitat in the eastern United States. The park's hundreds of miles of mountain streams are managed as wild trout waters, closed to stocking, with native Southern Appalachian brook trout that have adapted to the precise chemistry and temperature of their particular drainage over thousands of years.