Generation is everything on the river. 2 generators usually means the river is blown out and moving too many CFS to be easily fishable especially from the bank. When they are doing it like that, the people with drift boats seem to do the best. From January until this past weekend, they have ran 2 generators and 4,000+ CFS every hour of every day. The first weekend in May, they start regulating flow for recreation...some hours will be no flow,.then 1 generator, then no flow, and around the afternoons, they cut both generators back on. IMO the river fishes best when they are bump and running it...vs running wide open. It is a river you have to wade or float to be consistently successful. There are some holes thst are 10+ feet deep that when they are generating wide open, the fish get down in them for current breaks, and then when they aren't running any water at all, those are the holes you want to find too. They catch them from Patty Bridge on up to the powerhouse. Most people tend to fish it from the powerhouse to Big Bend but there's a lot more river than just that stretch of it. They do stock it but IMO, you don't go to the Hiwassee to catch 10 inch stockers. You go there for those 20+ inch browns and rainbows. Fish that size aren't as apt to eating powerbait as their concrete stocker brethren are.
