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 Watts Bar Reservoir.
Clinch River arm (Roane, Anderson)
Polluted with: PCBs
Striped bass should not be eaten. Precautionary advisory for catfish and sauger.
Tennessee River portion (Roane, Meigs, Rhea, Loudon)
Polluted with: PCBs
Catfish, striped bass, & hybrid (striped bass-white bass) should not be eaten.
Precautionary advisory for white bass, sauger, carp, smallmouth buffalo and largemouth bass.
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.