Loran - Smith

Loran

It is about time for the trout to disappear in North Georgia streams, as the water temperatures will soon become too warm for them to remain active. Their preferred temperature is 50 to 65 degrees.

Temperatures are pleasant this time of the year for the most part, but not if you are a serious fisherman. Trout, which flourish when the temperatures are low, literally run away and hide as June rolls around.

When summer’s heat blankets the upper part of the state, trout seek colder, deeper, and shaded higher-elevation waters. In addition to that, the state halts stocking many of the smaller streams after July, which causes fish populations to decline.

Nonetheless, you can still enjoy the mountains of North Georgia if you cannot catch fish. There is something special about the mountains of our state any time of the year, except for when the ice storms wreak havoc.

Because the trout become inactive in summer, that doesn’t mean you can’t find fishing opportunities, such as striper fishing, in many of the lakes that abound throughout the mountains.

A s I think about the forthcoming summer heat, which eliminates that wonderful experience of fishing the Chattahoochee in October and November— even the cold days in December and the first quarter of the New Year—I found time this week to sit on my back porch and recall the good times I’ve had on the Chattahoochee.

“Out of the Hills of Habersham, “Down the valleys of Hall, “I hurry amain to reach the plain “Run the rapid and leap the fall.” That stanza of Sidney Lanier’s poem, “Song of the Chattahoochee,” is my constant companion wherever I go. I recite those words driving down the backroads of our state and when I am zoned out on a plane, moving through smooth air to a distant location.

There is so much fuss and so many squabbles in our world today. I humbly recommend that mudslinging politicians succumb to a pow wow on the Chattahoochee. Maybe we ought to coordinate a session of the legislature on one of the campgrounds where the Creeks and Cherokees once congregated.

And whenever a Republican continued from page

speaks ill of a Democrat and vice versa, we wash their mouths out with soap. If they act like children, then they ought to be constrained to endure that old-fashioned foullanguage remedy.

Despite the heat that envelopes our state, the mountains are cool and the coastal ocean breezes invite you in. Remembering this makes you pine for the voices of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald singing “Summertime.”

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy, “Fish are jumpin, and the cotton is high, “Oh, your daddy’s rich and you ma is good-lookin’, “So hush, little baby, don’t you cry.”

George Gershwin composed that tune for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess with lyrics by DuBose Heyward, which describes a peaceful, lazy summer.

Growing up, I remember that on the hottest days—without air conditioning to count on—we could repair to the pecan orchard in our back yard, relax under the shade of the cluster of the trees, and escape the sun’s burning rays. Those were laidback times. And a good book in a peaceful setting always makes the summer’s heat more tolerable.

Signing off, I’m here to say, I have already begun to pray for rain. A few well-placed rain showers between now and Labor Day will make living easy in the forthcoming summertime— even if we must wait till fall to catch a few trout.