The last day of fishing Carson and I decided to go together. We went back to Settles Bridge which was the second place we went to. It was a beautiful day and made me sad that this project is over. I have enjoyed my time doing my senior project and have learned a lot. Carson and I decided that for our last day we would both jump in the river. It was very very cold and made my head somewhat numb but it was worth it. Thank you all for keeping up with my blog and I am excited for y'all to see the video that Carson and I have created.

Today I worked on the documentary and the interactive map. I woke up with a pretty bad foot injury so I went to the training room and they said it is possible I have a lisfranc fracture, so I am getting an Xray tomorrow. It is a good thing I didn't put on my wadders and go crawling around on slippery rocks chasing fish. Despite this I was able to get a good amount of work done today and am excited to start shaping and editing the movie.

     Today was a great day on the river although the water levels were very high. I went to Jones Bridge today which is in Johns Creek. The dam did another huge release last night and into the morning. I did a little research and found that the Hybrid Bass are now starting to move down from Buford dam to past Lovett. This is not good for the local trout populations. They are a lot larger of a fish and can get up to 40lbs. That would be fun to catch. After going through a lot of the film I think that Carson and I are going to have a pretty cool documentary. I am very excited as I know am going to be having some surprise footage in our documentary so stay tuned.

Tuesday April 21 

     The sun was shinning bright today and after looking at the dam releases, I decided to go back to Whitewater Creek one last time. The visibility was really good today and I saw a bunch of turtles and an otter. For the second half of the day I went home and started working on cropping and editing for the documentary. There is a bunch of footage that we have and so I sorted through a lot of it and cut all of the stuff that we aren't going to use. The documentary is going to have a lot of information from the hatchery as to what they do and how they stock the river as well as Carson and mine findings. 

Monday April 20

    Today was a really awesome experience and I learned a lot. We woke up really early and went to the Buford hatchery. We got there at 8am and after a brief talk with our contact Pat, we were put to work. The first thing he had us do was a mortality count. We went from raceway to raceway and scooped out all the dead fish, counted them, and then recorded the number into their log. In one raceway there was over 100 dead which was a lot to count. We then took a tour with Pat and he showed us their filtration system. He explained it to us and it is basically a combination of mechanical and biological filtration. The end of the day was the best part. We collected fish found out the average fish / pound in a raceway. The stocking truck was then pulled up and we netted the fish and put them in the truck right after weighing them, so they could see how many fish they were releasing. We then fallowed Pat and got to stock the Chattahoochee river.

Thursday April 16

    This weather has been killing me for the past few days. The rain pushed a lot of run off into the river and so the visibility was low. I hiked about a half mile to the north of the entrance to Abbotts bridge and half mile to the South. I didn't bring the canoe today so I was wading in the water and cast fishing. I saw an otter today but the fishing wasn't great due to the water visibility. Some positive news is that I spoke to our contact at Buford dam and he has a stocking truck going out the day that we are going to volunteer. That will be a really cool experience so we can see how exactly the government stocks the Chattahoochee.

Wednesday April 15

     Today Carson and I used canoes in order to cover more ground. We fished the area of the river right by Lovett. We did fish together but in different canoes for safety purposes. Carson and I put our canoes in with the boat ramp at the recreation center, just a little north from the back gate. We float fished with fly roads which is tying a fly with a strike indictor and letting it drift down. Unfortunately we did not catch anything but it was really cool seeing Lovett from the river. The pollution in the water was terrible and the water itself was extremely murky. Tomorrow I am going to head to to head back to Abbotts bridge, where we went with the guide. I really want to find clear water because the fishing is better and it is so much more enjoyable.