When Jerry Anselmo first visited the Little Tennessee River, no outfitter provided services for the area. He could not find a canoe to rent to explore the river. So he remedied the problem himself, opening The Great Smoky Mountains Fish Camp and Safaris. The outfitting business has been successful enough to attract coverage from Field and Stream, Bassmaster and Backpacker magazine.

“This summer Southern Living is coming,” said a beaming Anselmo.

A visit from Southern Living, a lifestyle magazine, is appropriate because The Great Smoky Mountains Fish Camp and Safaris is not simply about fish. Anselmo, who formerly owned several five-star restaurants and is known as an excellent Italian chef, says his enterprises, past and present, are much alike; both are “hospitality businesses.”

His location on the Little Tennessee River, four miles from Franklin on N.C. 28, offers canoe rentals, guided tours, fishing tackle, tubing, riverside camping, an RV camp, a lodge room and mountain bike rentals, as well as a gourmet food store and gourmet picnic lunches.

The business has been described as “fast becoming the most famous smallmouth guides in the country,” by the Rebel Lure Company, and Anselmo agrees.

“We are known as some of the best smallmouth bass fishermen in the country.” No river in North Carolina produces more smallmouths than the Little Tennessee, and the fish usually average at least a pound in weight. Local anglers have long focused on trout, and in recent times fishing for bass in hydro impoundments has become popular. For these reasons, smallmouth bass fishing in the free-flowing Little Tennessee has been ignored by many.

Catch and release is the customary practice. In addition to smallmouth, the river offers occasional largemouth bass, walleye, channel and flathead catfish, rainbow trout, rock bass and redbreast sunfish.
Anselmo’s brochure also lists muskies, brown and brook trout as possible catches. Apart from game fish, the river features a variety of threatened and endangered creatures like the spotfin chub and Appalachian elktoe mussel.

The Little Tennessee River between Franklin and Fontana Lake is considered biologically the healthiest river in the Blue Ridge, but has not attracted as much attention as high-profile whitewater rivers like the Nantahala and Chattooga. The rocky river widens to 300 feet in the Needmore Tract, not far above Fontana. It is not flatwater, but the flow is slow and safe. An unusual feature of the river is pre-Cherokee fish traps, funnel shaped rock structures in the river that once guided fish — and now guide canoeists  into narrow passageways between the rocks.

Nowhere is this reach of the Little Tennessee River heavily developed. The upper half, from Lake Emory Dam to the upper end of the Needmore Tract at the mouth of Burningtown Creek, flows through a pastoral landscape where pasture is interspersed with patches of forest, and the Cowee Mountain Range is visible in the distance. On the Needmore Tract, where the valley narrows, the environment is almost a wilderness.

Anselmo owns several pieces of property along the water four to five miles apart and customers have access to both the Little Tennessee and Upper Tuckasegee Rivers. He caters to many types of fisherman, from fly fishing anglers to ultra-light tackle users.

Anselmo thinks the experience on the Little Tennessee River is “completely opposite” from the very popular Nantahala River. “People come here for an outdoor adventure. They might not see another person all day; whereas, on the Nantahala you’re in the middle of a Boy Scout club. They have to have police direct traffic.”

His business does not cater to big crowds.

“It’s peaceful and scenic. I love it here because of the sparseness of development, because of the farmland.”

As well as fishermen, Great Smoky Mountains Fish Camp and Safaris serves many pleasure floaters and tubers in the summer.

“It’s a great novice river. There are no weight and height limits on this river like the Nantahala. This river would be perfect to take a little kid down,” Anselmo said.

Out of season, Anselmo takes his own vacations.

“I work half the year and run all over the world half the year,” he says. In the winter months he will go to Costa Rica, Russia or his home in a New Orleans sailing community.

“Any place the mood strikes me.”

Anselmo’s customers also come from all over the world.

“We’ve been written up in about every major magazine in the country, so we attract a great clientele to Franklin,” he says. For now, though, he’d like Macon County and Western North Carolina to retain its small-town flavor.

“The more it stays the same, the better I like it.”

 

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