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Hello my friends, this is Simon from LakeHub. Today we are exploring Watts Bar Lake in
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eastern Tennessee. Watts Bar Lake is a pretty popular lake. It gets about a
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million visitors estimated every year. But it really, even then, it still doesn't
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feel crowded because of how huge it is. It is 72 miles long and 39,000 acres of
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playground. It has over 780 miles of shoreline to explore in a 108 foot max
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depth. This is a big popular lake. Sitting at about 740 feet of elevation at full
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pool, we're kind of getting into the hills of eastern Tennessee, but
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still not quite the mountains. It's not a mountain lake. It's not a flatland lake
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It's kind of in between. Watts Bar Lake sits halfway between Chattanooga and
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Knoxville, Tennessee. Watts Bar is fed by the Tennessee River, so it is
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maintained and was built by the Tennessee Valley Association. I'm standing in a TVA park right now and I can tell you that they do a great job as
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far as recreation infrastructure goes. We're towards the dam. There's a boat
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ramp. Great day use park. Roped off swim area. Looks like a whole lot of fun right
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next to a playground. Come out here and barbecue, do a little fishing. Fun with
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the kiddos. Can't beat that. What is notable and remarkable about Watts Bar
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Lake and iconic is the nuclear power plant. Now it was built in the late 30s
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early 1940s for hydroelectric power, but now in addition to that there's a nuke
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plant. And what's most notable is that the second tower was commissioned in
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2015, making it the one and only nuclear reactor for public power in the United
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States this century. That's pretty remarkable. I'm a big fan of nuclear. I
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know it has its drawbacks, but modern nuclear technology is not 1960s and 70s
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new technology. And I think that that is our cleanest, most viable energy source
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for the future. So bravo Tennessee. That plant alone powers over a million
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households in Tennessee. And because of that, you know, you see things like these
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transmission lines going over the lake. Now if you want to get away from this
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you can. You go that way, right? We're right by the dam in the southern end of the lake. This is where all the action is. You want to get more
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scenic, you go that way. But you got to take it. Take a little, give a little, right
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Also notable about Watts Bar Lake is the islands. Lots of islands. Over 20 islands
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that are, you know, measurably in size. And sandy beaches, great to pull up. Lots of
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coves, you know. So go out, find some islands, hang out, jump back on the boat
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find another one, hang out for a little bit, picnic, whatever, lay out on the sand
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I love islands at the lake. I think those are really cool. And so when I find a
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lake with a lot of islands I also think that's really cool. Some of those islands
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are even wildlife management areas which are usually hunnible, but very tightly
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managed and end up being like very wild. So that's pretty cool too. The three
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biggest islands are Long Island, Sandy Island, and my favorite Thief Neck Island
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I want to know the story behind that one. Okay, also notable is that the dam has a
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lock. Now I come from a land where locks are not common. So I know, you know, eastern
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Mississippi, a lot more common, especially these big rivers that just go
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for hundreds and hundreds of miles. But I love like feats of engineering and I
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think an elevator for a ship is pretty cool. So anytime I see a lock I'm like
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that's awesome. So they're built for barges, you know, going from Chattanooga
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to Knoxville up the Tennessee River. They move over a million tons of cargo every
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year through these locks. The history of the area is pretty common to eastern
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Tennessee. Cherokee people, you know, original inhabitants, which is another way of saying lots of different little sub-tribe, tribes and sub-tribes, that
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kind of gathered and banded together as a nation. And of course there's a whole
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mixed bag of history between then and now. If you know your American history
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you know what I'm talking about. There were treaties, there were broken treaties
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there was a Trail of Tears, so there was like happiness and then lots of sadness
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As far as tourism, like I said this area draws a lot of tourism. There are lots of
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cabins to rent, places to stay. There are eight notable marinas. There are tons
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dozens and dozens and dozens of boat ramps, official and unofficial, you know
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There's plenty of camping. There are private RV parks. There's lots of rural
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camping right on the water. There's RV parks right on the water. And so there's
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a lot going on here. As far as fishing goes, this lake has it all. Everything you
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expect from a southern, midwestern type of lake. It has largemouth, it has smallmouth
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which I like that. Striped bass, white bass, you know I love those too, which means
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also hybrids, also yes. Musky, paddlefish, walleye, catfish. Fishing! So much fishing
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If you like to fish and keep your catch and eat it there are some areas from old
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industry that have like some heavy metals and other deposits and stuff that
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end up in the fish meat. You do want to be cautious about that. There are
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warnings. You can learn more about that and many other things about how to
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experience the lake, best places to stay, map of boat ramps, all the cabins and
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marinas and everything else on wattsbar.com. I'll put a link down below
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for that. I'm Simon from Lake Ebb. Let's keep exploring y'all
