The History of the Apalachia Tailwater
(Much of this info is from TVA and TWRA literature.)
The River
The headwaters of the Hiwassee River start in the Blue
Ridge Mountains in NE Georgia. The river flows north
into North Carolina, and then bears west into Tennessee.
The major impoundments upstream of Apalachia Dam are,
in order, Hiwassee Lake, Nottelly Lake (on a tributary),
and Chatuge Lake. Apalachia Lake backs up about 10
river miles to the foot of Hiwassee Dam, and stays at
pretty much a constant level of 1277 feet above sea
level. Hiwassee Lake varies from a summer level of
1516-1521 to a winter pool level of 1455-1465.
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The Tailwater
The dam and powerhouse were built 1941-1943 to provide power for Oak Ridge in support of the war effort, at a cost of about 24 million dollars. The dam is at river
mile 66 (the river is about 140 miles long), and is
about 12 river miles upstream from the powerhouse. The area receives an average of about 57 inches of rainfall each year. About half of this flows down the river. The drainage area is about 1000 square miles, and the dam backs up 57,800 acre feet of water at a pool elevation of 1280 feet. Unlike most TVA lakes, the pool elevation stays the same all year long (1274-1279). The lake is not big, and the powerhouse is remotely operated from the Hiwassee powerhouse. In general, whatever runs out of Hiwassee runs on through Apalachia. Maximum discharge on both turbines is about 2850 cfs. This is
big water, and in places the river bed is 200 yards wide. Capacity is about 93 megawatts. Minimum required
average flow is 200 cfs.
The biggest known flood at the dam site was estimated at 82,000 cfs in 1898. The biggest recorded flow at the dam was about 39,000 cfs in 1973. I have been told that this flood got into the basement at Webb's Grocery. The spillways will handle 156,000 cfs. The dam is 150 feet high, and about 1300 feet long.
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The Fishery
Apalachia is the only tailwater in Tennessee that is
usually stocked all 12 months of the year. Rainbow and
brown trout are stocked, about 30,000 browns in March,
and in the neighborhood of 100,000 rainbows spread over
every month of the year. There are holdovers, with
browns generally doing better than rainbows.
The Hiwassee is noted for a great variety of insect
life, but the hatches generally are not heavy.
My understanding is that stocking started in the mid
fifties, but old timers tell me there was a trout
fishery before stocking started. Some of the
tributaries were stocked long before then, and fish
would migrate down to the river, and some managed to
survive.
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