Conasauga River Trip Report

by Eric Fleming, Flatwater Cruisemaster

 

34 of us met on Saturday May 14th at 10 am at the put in on the Conasauga River near Dalton, GA on a beautiful sunny day.
We ran shuttle and put on for our TVCC and NERA joint 8 mile paddle. Surprisingly we had 17 from each club.
While paddling all of a sudden a whole school of carp got panicked by all our boats and started jumping all around us. I have never seen that happen other than on TV when they get spooked by power boats and jump into the boats. Our fishing expert (Bumper who won the big bass tournament in Lenoir City last month) said they got panicked by all our boats and felt trapped. Of course by the time I got my camera out they disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared.
It’s a Class 1 river and there were some tricky areas. We had a couple of swims but everyone did great.
The put in, take out, and parking was pretty limited, but everyone jumped in and made it all go smoothly. A great team.
Happy paddling!