Excellent fishing opportunities. No Fee. Open year round, hiking & picnic facilities.

Deep-water releases from hydroelectric dams provide the cold-water habitat favored by trout, but often don’t have enough oxygen for healthy fish to thrive. But the South Holston weir provides water flow in the river channel during periods of no generation, which ensures a more consistent, healthy habitat for insects, plant life and fish. The weir creates a series of waterfalls, forming air pockets that in turn burst into air bubbles as they plunge downstream. These air bubbles churn the otherwise calm water, allowing oxygen to penetrate throughout the depths of the reservoir, creating optimal conditions for trout to thrive.

The water quality improvements since the weir’s completion have helped support substantial natural reproduction among the population of brown trout in the South Fork Holston River. In fact, the South Holston tailwater is now managed not as a put-and-take and put-and-grow brown trout fishery with annual stockings, but as a wild brown trout fishery

The trout are protected during spawning season, both by the establishment of a protected length range (trout between 16 and 22 inches long must be released unharmed) and by the closure of spawning areas to fishing. Though rainbow trout are still stocked annually, wild brown trout are naturally abundant, making the South Holston tailwater one of the most popular fisheries in the Southeast.