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Reel Angling
Adventures
About Our Team
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Reel Angling Adventures
is proud to share its team of six professional and courteous guides
with our clients.
Blended from a unique
group of anglers, the guide team holds more than 120 years of
collective angling experience among venues in the southern
Appalachian Mountains and some of the finest fishing locations
around the world. |
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Bob
Borgwat |
Lee
Howard |
Bill
Stranahan |
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Chad
Bryson |
Brian
Stanford |
Jerry
Weicken |
RAA's Bob Borgwat
leads a 5-man team of dedicated,
professional fishing guides armed with life-long angling
experience that has seen them pursue game
fish
in a variety of settings around the world.

Bob Borgwat leads the guide team of
Reel Angling Adventures as owner,
administrator, web master and guide.
His freelance writing, which focuses
on both the fishing and hunting sports
across the US, qualifies him as an
active member of
the
Georgia Outdoor Writers
Association, for
which
he
currently
serves as chairman of the
board. |
At
51 years
young, Bob's
fishing experience in the southern
Appalachian Mountains spans 17 years. A native Californian, he came
to North Georgia in 1990 after living 15 years in Texas,
where he honed his bass-fishing skills on the legendary lakes of
East Texas.
Bob's angling fortunes
stretch to the rivers of Wyoming's Rocky Mountains,
high-country streams of California's Cascade Mountains, the bays and
bayous of the Mississippi Delta, the waterways of Nicaragua's
Caribbean jungles, the azure flats of The Bahamas, the rocky shelves
of Mozambique's Indian Ocean, the mysterious rivers of
southern Africa, and many more. Much of his angling experience
-- both stateside and abroad -- has been captured in his own
words and photography, as author of more than 100 |
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magazine articles published as a freelance writer
and editor for state, regional, national and international fishing
magazines. Bob also has frequently served as interim senior editor for
16 state titles of outdoors magazines published by Intermedia Outdoors
in Marietta, Ga. |
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Bob’s
passion for the pull of a fish on a fishing line never limits his scope
in fishing – neither the fish, techniques, nor tackle for the job at
hand. You’re just as likely to see him slinging plastic worms
for smallmouth bass with conventional tackle as you are to see
him flogging a
favorite trout stream
with a 4-weight fly rod. |
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RAA's
Lee Howard
holds more guiding experience than any other guide on our team. For
35 years, Lee has chased both fresh- and saltwater gamefish across a
wide swath of the Southeast US and a few venues beyond our nation's
borders.
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Lee Howard has
guided extensively across the southern Appalachian Mountains
and deep across the waters
of the southeastern US. Today, his reach in the fishing
world extends to ownership and designer of the line of
topwater lures manufactured by Blackwater Bait Co.
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Spend a few
minutes talking with Lee and you'll quickly discover his
passion for bass fishing. His angler's love for fishing
finds him chasing brown trout, seatrout, snook and even
tarpon. But it's the
black bass -- largemouth, smallmouth
and spotted bass -- that kicks him into high gear. His
bass-fishing tactics have been featured in FLW Outdoors
magazine, and he's put his skills with topwater lures,
crankbaits, jerkbaits and soft-plastics to good use, earning
several first-place and top-5 finishes in bass tournaments
on lakes across Georgia and Florida.
During the last
15 years, Lee's fishing focus has zeroed in on the bass and
trout waters of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee.
He's a mentor for the rest of our guide team, proving daily
his knowledge and scope of fishing ... for bass and most any
other game fish on our menu. |
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Throughout the southern
Appalachian Mountains region, no matter if he's throwing a 5-weight
for trophy trout
at Tooni Cove Farm or chunking his favorite hair
jig for spotted bass on Lake Chatuge, you can bet Lee won't stop
fishing until he lands the big one! |

That's him --
fishing guide and river rat Bill Stranahan -- of Reel Angling
Adventures, as he works his fly-fishermen into a drop lane on Towee
Shoals on the Hiwassee River. |
RAA's
Bill Stranahan ...
Client-anglers have used these words to describe fishing guide
Bill Stranahan:
“Quiet.” Hmmm …
“Reserved.” Well …
“Low key.” Really?
“Polite.” Absolutely!
“Patient.” Yes!
"Fish-minded." Is there
any question?
“River-wise.” Like you
don’t know!
But “river rat” may be
the best words to describe him. Just 34 years old, Bill has lived
for 10 years almost
riverside to the Hiwassee River at |
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Reliance, Tennessee, and it’s Bill who has led Reel
Angling Adventure's
guided fishing over the past year on the
Hiwassee River at Reliance,
Tennessee.
Bill joined RAA shortly
following the company's award in January 2007 of its outfitters’
permit, issued by the
Cherokee National Forest. There couldn’t have been many anglers
better suited for meeting RAA’s immediate needs in its first season
of
floating drift boats on the Hiwassee River. Calling the Hiwassee
his home, Bill has spent 11 years floating, wading and fishing the
tailwater at Reliance and the river’s watershed, as it stretches
high into the Cherokee National Forest. He’s got water on his mind
365 days a year, but he admits he can’t quite make a plan to fish
every single day – after all, his mom’s birthday comes once a year!
Bill comes to RAA following three
years of guiding for long-time outfitter Hiwassee Outfitters in
Reliance, and a season of serving as lead guide for
Reliance Fly & Tackle,
located on Childers Creek Road just minutes downstream from the
Smith Creek Powerhouse put-in at the top of the Hiwassee Scenic
Riverway. Bill engages anglers of every level with instruction that
widens their individual view of trout waters, the means with which
to catch trout, and the specific knowledge required to take
fly-fishing for trout well beyond the day-to-day encounter. You
might also ask him about catching striped bass on the Hiwassee. |
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RAA's
Chad Bryson ...
You expect a fishing guide to have fish blood in his veins, right?
Well, fishing guide Chad Bryson can’t have much anything else than
fish blood pumping north, south, east and west through him. From the
trout
waters in the mountains of north Georgia, east Tennessee and western North
Carolina, to the waters inshore and offshore of Cudjoe Key, Florida,
Chad carries fishing experience -- especially with the fly rod in
hand -- unlike that of the typical fishing guide found in the
southern reach of the Appalachian Mountains. |

It's his
wide-ranging fishing experience -- from the Appalachian Mountains to
the Florida Keys -- upon which fishing guide Chad Bryson builds his next
approach to
taking fish on both the easiest and toughest fishing days.
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At 36 years old, Chad
has built a life around fishing. He’s a North Georgia native who has
most recently worked 15 years as a regional sales rep for a major
distributor of fishing tackle and accessories. Chad has run wild
since childhood across the southeastern US
chasing trout, bass and
stripers in freshwater and bonefish, tarpon, snook and permit in
saltwater. Reel Angling Adventures and our clients are fortunate to
have hooked into an angler whose experience runs so wide.
When the fishing gets
tough, Chad’s deep-seated fishing knowledge is displayed in his
ability to read the situation clearly and adapt his fishing
techniques to take fish when others cannot. Whether he’s throwing
his infamous “size 48 midges” to the most finicky of trout, or he’s
gone |
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off into the
“twisted
fishing” methods that result in hook-ups during the most trying
times, Chad displays keen – sometimes offbeat – techniques in
fly-fishing that’s sure to put a bend many times a day in his
clients’ rods.
It’s the Tellico River,
Hiwassee
River, North River and Bald River watersheds of the Cherokee
National Forest that are dear to his angler’s heart, but Chad’s
guide services extend deep across the entire range of waters in
RAA’s portfolio. |
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RAA's
Jerry Weicken ... |
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RAA's Brian Stanford ... |
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