A dam with no turbines, and a gauge TVA watches
Normandy is the odd one among Tennessee's TVA dams: it was built in the 1970s for flood control and water supply and never had generators, so there is no hydropower schedule to check and no wall of water arriving on the hour. What there is instead is a release target, and the draft 2026 Duck River Regional Drought Management Plan spells it out. TVA releases from Normandy Reservoir to hold 40 cfs just below the dam at all times, and to keep a weekly average of 120 cfs at Shelbyville from December through May and 155 cfs from June through November, measured at Duck River mile 221.4, plus a 10 cfs allowance for the Shelbyville water intake. Farther down, TDEC wants the Milltown gauge held at no less than 165 cfs for the mussels.
That Shelbyville number is USGS 03598000, the gauge on this page, and it explains why the reading barely moves in a dry September: it sat between 153 and 177 cfs for most of the two weeks before September 23, 2026, with one rain bump to 263. The 150 to 600 cfs band here is drawn from the TVA summer target on the low end and the gauge's own record on the high end, where the May through October means run from about 300 to 755 cfs and January through March average more than 1,300. Above 600 the shoals from Three Forks to Halls Mill fill in and a wading day becomes a float.
Rainbows from the dam to Three Forks Bridge, November to June
TWRA stocks rainbow trout in the Normandy tailwater from the dam downstream to Three Forks Bridge from November through June, and stops when it stops for a reason: the river warms past 70 degrees in the other months and the trout do not survive it. This is a put-and-take winter fishery under the statewide rule, seven trout a day with no length limit, and a trout license is required. TWRA's own how-to is drifted nightcrawlers or scented dough baits, small Rooster Tail spinners, and for fly anglers a Woolly Bugger, which it calls the common thread. The stretch from the dam to the second bridge downstream near the town of Normandy is the agency's recommended canoe float for trout.
Do not expect a Caney Fork. There is no slot, no holdover population worth planning around and no midge-and-sowbug culture; there is cold water from a bottom outlet, a few miles of stocked fish, and a river that turns into bass water almost immediately below.
Three Forks to Halls Mill, and the Shelbyville float
TWRA describes the Duck from Normandy Dam down to Halls Mill as swift and rocky, the best smallmouth and rock bass water on the river, and the float from the Three Forks Bridge access to the Highway 41A bridge near Shelbyville as the one to make in a canoe or kayak. Rock bass are abundant through here. The agency's fly-rod advice is a natural-colored Woolly Bugger or a beadhead hellgrammite nymph worked into pockets the way you would fish for trout, and its bait advice is a live crayfish on a number 1 hook with little or no weight around big rocks and undercut banks. Electrofishing finds smallmouth to 20 inches with most fish 10 to 14, and the walleye that turn up here are a bonus.
By Henry Horton State Park the river has grown and the pools are longer and slower, largemouth and spotted bass take over the soft water, and the middle-river accesses at Milltown, Leftwich, Iron Bridge and Yanahli string together the float trips. There are 30 free public access sites on the Duck listed in TWRA's boat access section, from concrete ramps to carry-down canoe spots. Below the Columbia dam at Riverwalk Park the fish have open water to the Tennessee River, access thins out and a jet boat near Littlelot or Williamsport is how the trophy smallmouth water below Centerville gets fished.
Crayfish, hellgrammites and the summer topwater
The Duck has no published hatch chart because nobody fishes it for hatches. Its seasons are the smallmouth's. TWRA's advice from Old Stone Fort down is built on crayfish and stonerollers, small crayfish-style crankbaits, wacky-rigged finesse worms along boulders, and for fly anglers the Woolly Bugger and hellgrammite nymph, with a Jitterbug gurgled through the slow pools at dusk in midsummer for largemouth. Read that as a calendar: crayfish patterns from the time the water warms in April through October, hellgrammite and dragonfly nymphs through the summer, minnow and shad imitations when the river cools in fall and the fish chase, and floating bugs from June into September. Winter belongs to the stocked rainbows and to the sauger and walleye that TWRA notes in the swift upper river.
The plan in section one matters to an angler because low water is the river's problem. American Rivers put the Duck at number three on its 2024 Most Endangered Rivers list over water withdrawals, seven pending permits at the time adding up to 16 million gallons a day, and Governor Lee created a watershed planning partnership that November. The river is the drinking water source for about 250,000 people and the state's own summary calls it the most biologically diverse river in North America, with 151 fish species, 56 mussels and 22 aquatic snails. When the Shelbyville gauge sits at the 155 cfs target in August, that is the whole river.
Five bass, twenty rock bass, seven trout, and where you can stand
TWRA's rules for the Duck are the statewide ones. Largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass are five per day in combination with no length limit; rock bass are 20 per day; only one catfish over 34 inches may be kept; trout are seven a day with no minimum, license and trout license required. There is no special smallmouth slot on the Duck, unlike the Cheatham reach of the Cumberland or the Little River below the Smokies, so the agency's electrofishing size structure is the only thing protecting the 18-inch fish.
Trespass is the other rule to know. TWRA states it directly: in Tennessee you are trespassing if you are standing on the bank or the bottom of a private stretch, but legal if you are floating. Wade the state parks and the public sites, float the rest, and ask before you climb out on a gravel bar that is not signed.