ETOWAH RIVER: CARTERSVILLE, GEORGIA

On Georgia’s Etowah River, the fish are spread out over about 50 miles of river, so covering water is the name of the game. Anglers should expect to do a lot of casting to each shoal and piece of wood cover where stripers might lie in ambush.

Starting in April, they run some 75 miles upriver from Alabama’s Lake Weiss to a lowhead dam downstream of Georgia’s Lake Allatoona. The fish are constantly on the move

The Hiwassee is more of a quality than quantity fishery. Anglers are called on to fish hard for just a few bites, but those bites come from fish that often weigh 20, 30, even 40 pounds or more.

Most years, the wide, shoal-broken river around Reliance loads up with striped bass from July into September. These are big-river fish that run some 50-miles upstream from the Tennessee River at Lake Chickamauga. They revel in cold, oxygenated water that flows down the mountains from Apalachia Lake on the North Carolina/Tennessee border.

They hold in the same holes and shoals every year to feed heavily on skipjack herring, gizzard shad and the stocked trout Tennessee puts in the river for anglers.

For more information, visit coastalanglermag.com.