Sweet Georgia Brown

Chad Daughty's 20-pound-14 ounce brown trout, which he
caught from the Chattahoochee River, broke the Georgia state record
by 2 1/2 pounds. Photo courtesy of the Georgia Department
of Natural Resources.

"You have trout in Georgia?" people sometimes ask. In other places, when folks think of Georgia, many think of peanut farms, downtown Atlanta, Okefenokee Swamp and maybe a peach orchard. Few picture the mountainous country that I live at the edge of, and somehow trout just don't fit the stereotypes.

Yep. We have trout: brown trout, rainbows and brook trout. Only the brookies are native, but many Southern Appalachian streams support natural reproduction of rainbows and/or browns.

Along with the mountain streams, a couple of tailwaters stay cold enough to support good trout populations, and that's where the trout tend to grow big. Chad Daughty, a 27-year-old angler from Winder, Georgia, was the most recent person to prove that in grand fashion. While fishing from a kayak in the Lake Lanier tailwater (Chattahoochee River), Daughty had a whopper trout attack his spinner. Forty-five minutes later Daughty landed what would soon be confirmed as the new state record brown trout.

The record brown weighed 20 pound, 14 pounces and eclipsed the former record by 2 1/2 pounds.

Yep. We have trout in Georgia.