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If one had to pick a single unique gem of our area, it is our near pristine shoreline of Hiwassee Lake. Other towns nearby have casinos, long-range mountain views, closer access to better highways or even more boutique tourist shops.
We do not even have an excursion train, unlike Bryson City, Blue Ridge, Ga., Copperhill, Tenn., and Etowah, Tenn., and the fact it is the centerpiece on the new mural downtown. The county commissioner I asked about a train utilizing existing tracks and depot area said we couldn’t afford it – although more than 60,000 people are riding the Blue Ridge train each year.
Instead, what do our county leaders have in mind? Petitioning the U.S. Forest Service for release of Hiwassee’s lakeshore for private development. (More land taxes would be the assumed goal.)
In Hiwassee Lake, we have a gorgeous mountain lake created by the Tennessee Valley Authority before 1940, 6,000 acres with 180 miles of shoreline for the most part unsullied by private docks and McMansions butted together to soak up every inch of lakeview property. Nearby Nottley and Chatuge lakes are available for a shoreline polluted with private docks and crammed houses, examples of lust for the almighty real estate dollar despoiling our beautiful mountains. Few locals own property on those lakes.
I grew up on Hiwassee’s Lake banks. Fished it before I could carry a cane pole, spent nights on her shores around fires fueled by driftwood and nights I owned a houseboat on the lake. It was only in recent years the Hiwassee Lake name was changed by some PR whiz to the more upscale sounding Lake Hiwassee.
On Hiwassee Lake, Tyler Shields was using a Zoom worm on a 10-pound test line when he landed the world-record striped bass at 66.1 pounds. It was almost 4 feet long. The state record 10.2-pound smallmouth bass was caught in 1951 by Archie Lumpkin on Hiwassee. Both records still stand.
Had bass tournaments existed in my youth, my neighbor, Fonzy Hale, would have been a millionaire. He was a legend among Hiwassee’s fishermen. He caught fish when no one else was catching anything.
He was a TVA hydroelectric operator, and his obsession was fishing Hiwassee and Appalachia Lakes – almost every day. His wife worried about him fishing alone, so as a concession he would take on an apprentice to join him, usually a 12 year old boy – a good impressionable age to be introduced to serious fishing. I was one of Fonzy’s apprentices.
Fishing with Fonzy was a year-round enterprise. It was never too cold nor hot to fish. There were dozens of ways to fish. From the bank at the tailrace of the dam in the fall, crappie beds in the spring (He didn’t use stringers – instead he put a 50-pound washtub in the center of the boat, and we would fill it.)
We ran trot lines, secured with a rock at each end and submerged to prevent others from running the line in our absence – raised by opening all the clips on a metal stringer and dragging it along the bottom until it snagged the line, allowing
us to bring it to the surface. We baited the line with cut bait, sunfish we caught with flyrods. Spring was handmade white feathered hooks trailing a foot or more behind an old wood topwater lure.
After school, Mom would be at the door with my rod and reel, a sandwich in a paper bag, a tackle box and a ski belt. (Momma wanted to ensure if I tumbled in, I had a flotation device affixed to my body.) It was fish until dark every night, and more lake time on Saturday.
My dad loved fish. Fonzy did not care for eating fish, he only loved catching them. The daily catch always ended up cleaned by me and in our freezer.
Fonzy’s reputation was such that hangers-on at the dock began keying on what lure Fonzy had on his rod when he returned to the dock. My dad and Fonzy agreed that whatever lure my dad might be overstocked in our country grocery store, Fonzy would stop before he came into view of the dock and remove the lure he was using and replace it with dad’s overstocked lure. That dodge sold dozens of cards of white and yellow doll flies for my dad, until one fateful day when Fonzy forgot and his best fish-catching lure was discovered.
When I was 14 one Friday afternoon, he was waiting for me to go fishing – I declined, as I was supposed to meet a girl at a dance at school. Fonzy said, “When you start liking girls, you stop liking fishing.”
That was the last time we ever fished together. Within weeks, another 12-year old began their fishing apprenticeship. I had graduated.
Lisa Floyd’s father, Cassie, owned the boat dock (Harbor Cove Marina today), and she still owns Fonzy’s boat, safely stored in homage to him.
In all the time Fonzy and I fished together, even when a huge bass slipped the line and escaped, the only expletive he ever uttered was, “Shucks.”
Suffice to say that Hiwassee Lake is a part of my being, from then until now. My boat is less than five minutes from the boat ramp accessing Hiwassee.
Our pristine mountain jewel lake is under attack. I can only assume greed and lust for dollars has prompted local leaders to petition to open Forest Service land that surrounds Hiwassee Lake for private development. Do we need another overcrowded Nottley or Chatuge?
Where did such an idea originate? Certainly not by polling the area’s voters. Destroying our area’s primary gem for mere dollars?
We are in danger of losing the best asset of our county
if it becomes another crowded spoiled lakefront crammed with million-dollar homes for Atlantans, Floridians and other outlanders who have rushed here since Covid.
Hiwassee Lake’s unsullied vistas are available for everyone and should remain so – not just the wealthy. But that may change.
Bruce Voyles’ local history column runs every other week in the Cherokee Scout. Email him at RoadsLessTraveled@cherokeescout.com.