Water quality advisories from the State of Tennessee make it clear: there are lakes, rivers and creeks where you should not swim or fish because of potentially dangerous pollutants and bacteria.
►RELATED: What's in the water of East Tennessee?
Here are the specific advisories for Fort Loudoun Reservoir:
Fort Loudoun Reservoir (Loudon, Blount)
Polluted with: PCBs Mercury (upper portion only)
Commercial fishing for catfish prohibited by TWRA. No catfish or largemouth bass over two pounds should be eaten. Do not eat largemouth bass from the Little River embayment. Due to mercury, precautionary advisory for any sized largemouth bass from Highway 129 to the confluence of Holston and French Broad Rivers.
A precautionary advisory means children, pregnant women, and nursing mothers should not consume the fish species named. All others should limit consumption of the named species to one meal per month.
Here are the specific advisories--broken down by body of water--for other popular lakes in East Tennessee, as of March 2019. You can see the latest list on the Department of Environment and Conservation's website here.
Details on the pollutants can be found here.