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.

Tuesday April 14

    Today was a really early start. We had about a 3 hour drive up to the Chattahoochee River National Hatchery. The drive was a little rough as I was driving in the morning reason being, the fog was so think on those windy mountain roads I couldn't see 30 yards in front of me. After a little GPS malfunction we arrived at the hatchery. The hatchery was awesome, they had this super long "race ways" full of both Brook and Rainbow trout. Obviously, the fish were separated by sizes to keep the bigger fish from eating the smaller fish. Carson and I got some really good footage and learned a lot. We also did a good bit of volunteer work. We fed fish, we cleaned the raceways of fish poop, we collected dead fish and drove them up to the woods to dump them for bears and coyotes. Next we are going to go to the Buford Hatchery that stocks to river from Atlanta to Buford.

Monday April 13

As you know today was not a very pretty day and there was a lot of rain. Today I wen't Morgan Falls, which had just had a huge release of water and on top of that the rain. The river was very murky and somewhat dangerous. I did however receive the photos from the guide. I created a new tab on my blog called pictures and if you click on it you should be able to see them. The last picture on the page is a beautiful little Rainbow with some really nice color. Any way Carson and I are headed up to the hatchery tomorrow. Although the two hour drive doesn't sound fun, I am super excited to go up and see how it works. I think that we are going to get a ton of information. I already have my camera charging and I think a good portion of our documentary will be about the hatchery. n

Friday April 9

Today I went back to White Water Creek. I've stuck to only fly fishing because that is how we are catching the most fish. Although I didn't catch anything, It was still a beautiful day and I got a good amount of strikes. It was the first day where I was somewhat bothered by other fisherman. I had a bunch of people around me fishing which only decreases my likelihood of success. I would walk a little upriver and then sure enough someone would shout "have you caught anything? what are you using?". I was just thinking to myself I'm not going to catch anything with you yelling at me. So I decided to hike about a mile up the trial from the trail head. I found somewhat clean water and kept fishing.

No surprise if you read my previous post, today was our best day of fishing. We caught 18 rainbow trout and 1 brown. I will upload the pictures to the blog once I get them from the guide. With each fish we caught we measured him to see the average size. We learned a lot from the guide. I think in the future we are going to start using Carson's canoe as opposed to wading in the water. We will be able to cover more water and it is better for trout fishing. We also learned that the release of water from the dam effects fish behaviors a lot. They tend to feed in shallower water and with dam release the water can fluctuate up to two feet.

As you know today was extremely hot, but a beautiful day. There was a pretty heavy dam release on the river so the fishing was not good. Tomorrow Carson and I are going fishing with a guide. We are driving up to the John's Creek area to go with him. He is taking us out on a boat and we are going to be drift fishing. I am really excited because this guide has been catching a lot. Hopefully we will learn about what baits to be using and different techniques. I think this will be very informational for us.

Today was a great day. The sun was shining and I caught two fish. One was a 3.5 lb small mouth bass and the other was a 1.3 pound carp. I went off the main river so I could find some still water. I caught the bass on a pink worm and I caught the carp on a false hook. The spot I fished today was beautiful and there was little to no human contact with the water. The water was very clear even though there was rain last night. There was no trash in the river either. The spot was Jones Bridge and I highly recommend visiting it even if you aren't fishing.

Day 3

Today I went to Morgan falls dam to fish. I was using a fly rod with a bright fly as well as a drop shot worm. What it is is basically a fly and then hanging about a foot off of it is a worm. I used bright colors because the water was still a little murky. A lot of water was released from the dam last night. I didn't catch anything which was disappointing. I did see a baby otter and my heart almost melted. It was the cutest thing ever and I tried to snap a picture of it but every time I would pull out my camera it would swim away. I also saw three does on my way in. 

Day 2

Today we went to the Fish Hawk which is a local fishing store in Atlanta. They showed us charts from the Buford dam with how much water was being released. This information will be very helpful because if to much water is being released it becomes dangerous and the fishing will not be consistent. They recommended that we go to Settles Bridge in Suwannee Ga. This bridge is in section 2 of the river. The water was beautiful but very cold.... I fell in while slipping on a rock. Carson caught a nice 11 inch trout today on a spinning rod.

Beginning

So today was the first day of the project and it went pretty well... but we didn't catch any fish. We fished inside of 285 on a spot called white water creek just south of Lovett. I fished the south part of the trail while Carson fished the north. It rained a lot last night so the runoff into the river was not ideal. There was also a ton of pollution in the water. There was trash all over the path and sometimes just stuff floating down the river. I took a picture of how the water looked in some parts of the river. As you can see it is not very pretty and there is a lot of algae, which is not good for fish. Tomorrow we are going to head outside of the city to our second section of the river and hopefully we will have better luck.