South Holston Lake

Somewhere on South Holston Lake, just about every Saturday in the summer, you’ll find somebody fishing – in a tournament. Some contests are informal. Others are big events, with sponsorships coming from the likes of Wal-Mart.

As many as 50 fishing tournaments are held each year on South Holston, said Rex Pendergrass, an assistant manager of Watson’s Marine in Bluff City, Tenn.

From April to September, Pendergrass said, some local fishermen gather twice a week in “a little weekly rodeo.”

“It’s kind of a pot-luck deal,” he added. “They usually have 30 to 50 boats.”

In the past 10 years, while the number of tournaments have remained the same, there at least seems to be more people participating in them, Pendergrass said.

“Absolutely,” he added. “There’s been large, more organized circuits come to fish South Holston.”

Among them are the Volunteer Division of the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League.

Boats may number as many as 160 in some contests, Pendergrass said.

“We’ve got more than we used to have,” said Peter Koserski, who operates Friendship Marina on the eastern banks of South Holston Lake in Tennessee.

But Koserski remembers something more – boat races, held on the lake in late 1970s.

And, as Koserski figured, “Since the ’80s, the fishing has slowed down some.”

LARGE NUMBER OF BOATERS
Crappie, bass and trout remain sought-after game. Fishermen also brag about catching catfish up to 4 feet long.

South Holston, among many publications, ranks “as one of the top smallmouth [bass] lakes in the Southeast,” said John Slagle, the co-owner of Lake View Dock.

“It’s not an easy lake to fish,” Slagle said. “It’s a deep, clear, mountain lake. And clear lakes are real hard to fish.”

Often, Koserski and Slagle have observed, South Holston Lake attracts many out-of-town visitors, especially when races are held at nearby Bristol Motor Speedway.

“We get some folks during race traffic,” Slagle said. “They’re looking for something to do while they’re here.”

As the tourism director of Sullivan County, Krisna Goodwin consistently points visitors in the direction of the 7,580-acre waterhole. And, yet, she also promotes the two other large lakes of Sullivan County – Boone Lake and Fort Patrick Henry Lake.

“We see a large number of boaters,” Goodwin said. “We’ve seen a large increase in the numbers on South Holston.”

Over the past couple of years, too, Goodwin has noticed an increase in use at the 77-acre Observation Knob Park, overlooking South Holston Lake.

“I do promote Observation Knob Park and the lake,” Goodwin said. “It’s easy to promote Observation Knob Park, so easy to promote that.”

But rules have changed at “Ob-Knob.”

About a year ago, the seemingly permanent residents of the campground were evicted, and the park was redeveloped, to be used by temporary campers.

Today, park use seems to be going up, Goodwin said.
“And I think we’re definitely seeing an increase in the boating,” Goodwin said. “We’ve seen an increase in our daily usage.”

GET SOME TOURISTS
Slagle suggests tying tourism to fishing opportunities.

“As far as tourism goes, you would need guides for smallmouth-bass fishing” to sustain a tourism industry, he said.

“You are going to have to have guides that are knowledgeable,” Slagle added. “As far as cruising, it’s not a huge lake. It’s not a big lake, as far as just coming here and hitting the lake. Here, you can see all of the lake in a day.”

Built in the 1940s and completed in 1950, South Holston extends 24 miles in length. It is one of several reservoirs constructed by the Tennessee Valley Authority for power generation and flood control.

“You get some tourists,” Slagle said. “But South Holston is not a tourist attraction as such.”

It’s listed in the 2007 Tennessee Travel Guide with a two-line description: “Unmatched natural beauty and outdoor recreation. Experience water skiing, fishing, boating and hiking.”

TVA officials do not specifically promote tourism possibilities at South Holston, said Gil Francis, a TVA spokesman.

But information is distributed about the recreation facilities on the reservoir and ones like it – from where to launch a boat to places to camp along the shoreline, like the remote Little Oak Recreation Area at the base of Holston Mountain.

“Generally speaking,” Francis said, “you’re seeing more and more people around the reservoirs.”

Web Extra:

Up on Holston Mountain, you’ll find bear, deer and wild turkey.

You’ll also find hunters, wielding shotguns and high-powered rifles, ready to take down a wild animal.

It might be a grouse, a squirrel or a rabbit.

In recent years, hunting appears to be on the rise along the Sullivan-Johnson county line in the Cherokee National Forest near South Holston Lake, said Joe McGuiness, a wildlife biologist for the National Forest Service.

“There’s good turkey hunting,” McGuiness said. “There’s good deer hunting. If you move a little bit higher up on the mountains, there’s also good grouse hunting.”

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency keeps track of the large game species nabbed by hunters – including deer and bear.

The number of deer harvested in Sullivan County rose from 349 in 1992 to 1,304 in 2007, said Allen Ricks, an information officer in the TWRA’s East Tennessee office.

In turn, Ricks said the number of bear harvested in Sullivan County rose from two in 1999 to 12 in 2007.

“There’s an extremely good increase in the bear population,” Ricks said. “That upper-end [of East Tennessee] over the last several years has increased quite a bit. Some of those counties did not have numbers a few years ago.”

Why the change?

“By protecting more females, the population grew,” Ricks said. “There’s a bear population there shared among Tennessee, North Carolina and northern Georgia.”