Okay, folks. Here’s our shot at it. Fly Rod & Reel just compiled a list of the 12 top retirement towns . . . with an obvious slant toward trout fishers. All well and good and envious places for the most part. So, if you were to complete a list of the top warmwater retirement towns, where would you settle in? While we’ll probably retire in NE MO, this isn’t bad shakes around here - - except for the winter. We’re 15 minutes from good fly fishing for walleyes in the upper Minnesota River (remote and picturesque), an hour from the Mississippi and great smallie action, and the lakes start about a half hour to 45 minutes from here with good LMB, bluegill, pike, crappie and even some smallie haunts. How about you?
White43;
Grayling, Michigan
Colorado Springs, Colorado
NE Indiana - 400+ lakes within an hour; several smallmouth rivers within 1 1/2 hours; them slimy trout fishies within 2-3 hours. House paid for and retired! lol
Only disadvantage - that hard water in the winter; however, we do have highways heading south that are open all year.
Donald
Believe it or not the area around Atlanta is a great place to live/retire. There is very good trout fishing in the Hooch (right in Atlanta) or north Georgia mountains (about 1-2 hours away). Excellent warmwater opportunities with LM, bream, crappie, stripers etc. all around Atlanta and the weather is tolerable all year long. I fish 12 months of the year and still get to experience the change of seasons I got used to growing up in New England. After 32 years in the south, I am no longer interested in living in cold weather at all. I’m convinced that if the Pilgrims had landed in Savannah, Canada would be huge! We wouldn’t have bothered to settle anything north of Virginia 
Jim Smith
(a very happily transplanted yankee)
Hey Hatch!!!
When will my apartment be ready??? 
Mike
This site’s about sharing!
Hey Mike,
No problem buddy. Give me 10 minutes
warning and I’ll kick the dog out of his
house and throw in an armload of fresh
straw for ya. Warm regards, Jim
Jim,
That’s FANTASTIC! My wife takes the straw out…says I’ll ruin it for when the dog gets back in.
Seriously, it MUST be Bonneau, SC…read Hatch’s lunker gill & redear waters. Remember folks, we’re talkin’ warmwater.
Mike
[This message has been edited by ohiotuber (edited 27 October 2005).]
Hey Mike,
Lake Moultrie is some really good
warm water. Most of the fishing shows and
magazines give it high ratings. Even with
the publicity, it’s easy to find a chunk of
water to fish without having to share. In
my swamp fisheries on the north shore of the
lake, it’s exceedingly rare to find another
boat in my hotspots. I like that a lot.
But as far as living here, we really do
live in the sticks.G If your not easy to
entertain, you would quickly become bored.
But if you like peace and quiet, it’s super!
I tell everyone Bonneau, because it’s on the
maps. MacBeth where we live rarely shows up
on them. Bonneau has their own cop now.
But they still don’t have a stoplight yet. We don’t either. If you want to see a real
stoplight, you gotta go to Moncks Corner,
the county seat.G But by the same token,
nobody remembers, or cares, where they put
the house keys. Never use them. We know
where the car and truck keys are. In the
ignition or over the visor where we keep
them. As often as not my wallet is on the
console in my pickup. That way I don’t
have to remember to take it when I go to
town. So, it has it’s advantages too.
Folks are honest and friendly. Goes with
the territory.G
I point this out because most folks will
fish less than 60 days a year. That leaves
a lot of time to be doing something else.
You just gotta make sure those bases are
covered too.G Warm regards, Jim
Sounds like our town, Hatch. We went for a week ot the Domican Republic. As we left I asked Sharon if she had a key to the front door. Nope. Well, I hadn’t had mine for a couple of years. So, we made sure it was tight enough to keep the box elder bugs out and took off. One of our exchange students came over to use the computer while we were out b/c there was an empty milk glass next to it, which is shaped a bit differently than my wine glasses. Only comment someone made was,
“Looks like Meryn was here to use the computer.” Tomorrow it’s to the tailwaters for some walleyes. Not trout, though the country is just as pretty. And we’ll be the only ones out there! JGW
It doesn’t get any better than East Texas small towns. Terrific lakes, large and small, all within driving distance, ponds to die for, withing driving distance of Arkansas trout fishing and Gulf saltwater fishing. A paradise for the fly fishing person.
Personally, I moved to the Mountain Home, Arkansas area just for the fishing. World class smallmouth in several places, both moving and stillwater. World record trout in more than one species just minutes away. Huge stripers in two lakes 30 minutes apart. Walleye, panfish, and more. Year-round fishing, with tailwater trout and like stripers filling in the winter months…the only place I could find that was close to comparable was North Carolina, and it was lacking some in the warmwater department, altho it was higher in the salt dept., seeing that Arkansas has no saltwater, no matter how cheap anyone says their beachfront property is…
Hey meadowlark, Used to live in Lufkin,Texas then moved to Huntsville Tex (no I was not inside)
Thats access area towns folks to Lake Livingston and Sam Rayburn to Non Texans.
The inside is a joke as Huntsville is the home of Texas Death row.
Great fishing in those lakes.Livingston used to have a major Crappie turney.
teasels,
My place is between Livingston and Lufkin out of Leggett…just a spot in the road on H59.
used to live in Zavalla before leaving for Vegas.(no jobs in Tex at that time)
Great fishing in East Tex and No.West Louisiana.(actually all over the south)
I had to comment on the the Fly Rod and Reel Magazine article.
Ashland, Oregon is one of the towns, 30 miles south of me. I think the median home price is about $450,000 not $140,000. If they just mean Jackson county, then maybe $300,000.
Ashland is a great town, especially of you have a Fidel Castro poster in your living room. Or you like to be taxed. Its probably 20 miles from the Rogue River, so odd choice. The fly shop listed is not in a good part of town (Medford) , and is 20 miles from Ashland, when Ashland has two fly shops. Its the one shop I never go to.
I would have picked Shady Cove as the town.
- rriver
[This message has been edited by rriver (edited 03 November 2005).]