By Phillip Hutcheson
How trout fishing gets ingrained in us fishermen is always an interesting story. In my case, finding my way back to trout fishing and then learning how to chase trophy brown trout is more what I am here to entertain you with. It started on the Chattahoochee River in 1986 on a kids fishing day. That day, my only fish was a four pound, 20 in rainbow trout and it has always stuck with me.
In 2005 my father was diagnosed with early onset dementia and I put the rod down for twelve years. My life was at a different point, filled with building a career and lots of travel. By 2017 I had a well-established career and had recently built a lab and training facility near the Hooch, as it is known. I started venturing down to the river after work and eventually ran into Alex Green as he was floating past me on the river. After a conversation about a recent large brown trout he caught, he offered me the opportunity to hop on the boat.
We fished together a good bit as I was learning how predatory giant brown trout operate in the most pressured brown trout fishery in the southeast. One day, as we were floating back through an area with a blue tube used for stocking, Godzilla showed up. Godzilla is a double kyped brown trout that was as thick as your thigh and probably in the 33-35 inch range and Alex had brought him out! He chased up and hit Alex’s presentation and the fight was…no, it wasn’t. Sadly, he’d thrown the hook and disappeared back into the deep emerald waters.
After seeing that size and quality of fish, it changed me. I became obsessed with anything I could learn about strategies for streamer fishing and jerk baits and how predatory fish respond. Alex also shared something more valuable, in my opinion, than the latest greatest bait. He shared this mentality: ”If you treat chasing big browns on the Hooch like musky fishing, you will be able to have success on the river.” So that became my mentality. I threw myself headlong into every opportunity to fish for browns whether it was wading or with Alex on his 14ft jon boat. What I did not realize was happening was that I had begun a size progression, which I have identified that anglers go through when learning how to trophy hunt.
I noticed as I fished, the size of my kicker fish would get larger, sometimes trip to trip, sometimes it would take a lil longer. Regardless, over the months I fished til Ole Split Jaw showed up. I saw looking back at photos how the size of the fish increased. The week prior, fishing with Alex, we had fished an evening session and I caught a nice 19 in, hook-jawed male.
The Saturday evening before, Alex and I spoke about the conditions for Sunday, March 12th. The weather was setting up with a typical late winter pattern in north Georgia. Temps were in the low 40’s and there was a light rain off and on that was moving through, and due to the lake being higher than normal, we would have to deal with some higher than normal water. We decided to fish at sunrise and launch from McGinnis Ferry boat ramp. This was a wise decision on our part as we would find out.
Days like that when trophy fish show up it is an interesting feeling you do not expect. As Alex and I ran up all the way to the bridge at Highway 20, dodging the rain, we decided to stop and start our drift from there. In those days, it was a paddle and bumping the motor for positioning, and doing this we worked our way down, with Alex consistently picking up browns out of timber along the way. I was not having near the luck Alex was. In fact, I was starting to get rather frustrated as I had only caught two fish to his near ten. He had caught some beautiful fish too! A couple of fat hens that were healthy and recovering from post spawn in the 16 to 18 inch range. My fish were not much larger than stockers though. I was beginning to question what I was doing. I kept thinking back to the mentality though…
As we rounded a bend, there is a creek river-left (facing downstream) with a small bar that links to a prominent rock shelf, which extends out two thirds of the way across the river. There is a good open chute river-right, which creates a big eddie towards river-left due to the rock shelf. There was an old blue tube, as I had mentioned before, and as we floated over I decided to cast.
In the light rain I punched a cast upstream over towards the chute we floated through. I had a bit of a tangle, which caused a longer pause on my retrieve, but I immediately got a nice flow going, got the retrieve back to the boat and cast back out, this time closer to the blue tube and the bank.
The emerald green water had some color to it, but I could see the flash of my lure under the water. Jerk…jerk…pause…jerk…jerk…pause…jerk…jerk—GOLDEN FLASH!!! All of the sudden my rod doubled over and the line started dancing upstream as he started digging deep. I knew I had a good fish on but I had absolutely no idea what I was dealing with. This guy was strong and digging deep as he tried to stay deep. “Alex, this is a GOOD fish!!!”, as I turned to see him grabbing the net. He reminded me to stay cool and that wherever I pull the rod tip, the fish should follow.
I started working the rod tip downstream opposing his bulldogging and allowing me to get him out of the current and into the eddie. I was gaining, I was winning. Then he would pull and dig and fear would flash through my brain. Another golden flash closer to the boat, which gave us a great idea of how big the fish was, as I was leading him towards the net. “Alright dude, he’s got one more run in him.” Alex said, as he came up to the surface, finally giving us a good idea of the fish’s size. I swung the rod up and over towards upstream and lifted his head while Alex dipped the net under him. I let out a primal scream of excitement that I did not know I had in me! Ole Split Jaw had finally come to the net!
As Alex began unhooking him, I was looking at his jaw and noticed that it was split just to the right of the tongue all the way up to the end of his hooked jaw. It gave him a strange split jaw look similar to the Predator. The injury had healed pretty well from what we could tell and he was strong and vigorous in the net.
I was astounded by what had happened. I had finally broken the 24 in mark on the Chattahoochee river with a brown trout. He was perfect and gorgeous despite his noticeable wound. He was a bright gold that faded to a bronze-brown color with red spots down in the gold, fading to mahogany spots then to black spots as they climbed his back to his dorsal fin. We snapped some photos and sent him on his way back home, hopefully wiser on what not to eat and upset that he was fooled again. I was floating on cloud nine at that point!
The hard work had paid off and I was super excited about Ole Split Jaw. I reached out to the Georgia DNR & spoke with a biologist with whom I shared photos of the fish and injury. To the best of their idea, they thought that he had been caught and put on a stringer that was punctured through his jaw skin. He more than likely alligator rolled until his jaw split open and he swam off. Little did I know that was just the beginning of one of the best weeks of trout fishing I have had.
As word got out locally about the fish, Alex and I kept talking about how good the conditions had been and if we could link up again and fish. Had to ride that wave while we could. The next time it worked out was St. Patrick’s Day. We finally had shorter work days and lengthening daylight which allowed us time to get out. This time the weather was completely different though.
St. Patrick’s Day greeted us with nearly blue bird conditions that afternoon. Temps had come up to the high 50’s with the whispers of spring on the warm breezes we were catching. We ended up meeting and launching at Medlock Bridge boat ramp about 4pm. Again we had slight color to the water and a nice flow to deal with, but overall the water was emerald green and perfect. We ran up towards a large bend in the river, with a shoal and rock, and started floating back from there. Once again, Alex started out pretty hot catching a couple of nice browns back to back as we transitioned from the shoals to timber along the bank. I had only picked up a stocker rainbow that was beat up and missing scales, not sure if he was a victim of the hatchery or a giant brown chasing him. Either way he was my only fish.
We floated down past the bridge and I finally picked up a brown that was around 14 in coming off a small bar at a creek mouth. Meanwhile, Alex was doing great numbers wise, being in double digits with the browns. Me, well I managed to get hung up so deep Alex and I had to switch positions so I was on the motor and he could dip his long arms underwater to get my presentation freed up.
As we floated, there was a stretch we came to with some boulders in it. They create very noticeable boils in the water and rainbow trout like to hang around due to the structure and grass beds. Hence, if you have stocker rainbow trout, giant brown trout will not be far behind some of their favorite forage.
We passed the boulder river-left (downstream) and due to the orientation of the boat, the bow was upstream. I decided to cast an angled cast up above the boulder so that it would come off the boulder and around the corner. In my mind I thought it would be the perfect ambush spot for a brown trout. And all of the sudden I had one of the hardest hits I have ever had fishing!
This fish absolutely hit my lure with the force of a freight train being dropped out of a tornado. It was violent and with such force that he hooked himself well. The fight was on. He started dogging and pulling deep, going down for the root balls in the area. I reeled and kept switching the direction of my rod tip trying to keep him from digging down to a root ball.
He finally came up to the surface and as he did, I yelled out, “He’s death rolling!!! He’s death rolling!!! He’s gonna break me off soon!!!” I was tense as he was spinning in the line on the surface. Thankfully I was able to use this to my advantage and skate him over and Alex came in with the net scoop that was perfect!
As he lay there in the net on the bottom of the boat, I was in awe. I was shaking and I let out another primal scream of happiness! This was a truly magnificent specimen of a Chattahoochee river brown trout. He had a double kyped upper and lower jaw with a funky knob on the end of the lower hook jaw. The blue blush on his cheek, which is common in brown trout, went from behind his eye, down his cheek and gill plate and even extended part of the way down his body. He had a deeper golden side that faded to a light brown up on his back with red and mahogany spots starting two thirds down his body and again fading to black at the top. He was perfection as the apex predator in that section of river and he had room to grow at 26.5in.
Once again, with excited and shaking hands, I picked the brown up and got a couple of pics and then filmed a short release video, exclaiming, “YES!!!” as he swam out of sight with power and quickness. Then I knew that I had really found my absolute favorite type of fishing in the world! And I have taken what I have learned and successfully caught trophy browns nationwide, passing the knowledge along so others may learn and repeat my success.
The 35 miles of trout waters below Buford dam are some of the toughest, most highly pressured, and sadly, most poorly maintained rivers in the country. There is a lot of hope and good momentum with Trout Unlimited’s success with the Crayfish creek project, which was a collaboration between many partners on the river. It has opened a lot of eyes to how we can help the river.
My outlook is that I want to catch browns and the other fishes in the river & help others catch these fishes as well, so people can see how awesome the fishery can be and how beautiful our browns are here. The Hooch was once considered on par with the White river in the 80’s, could it return to those glory days? I am not sure, but I do believe if you would like to come chase these fish, you may not want to stop. Ole Split Jaw is still out there, let’s go chase him!