The Franklin High School Fishing Team helps collect over 21,000 pounds of trash during lake clean up
January 9, 2023
Five local High School Fishing Teams along with one local business worked together to remove 21,803 pounds of trash from the banks of Percy Priest Lake on Saturday, January 7th. Tennessee BASS Nation organized a local trash clean-up “tournament” where student anglers could get community service hours for cleaning up the banks of the lake. Tennessee Bass Nation Director, Jake Davis said that the Percy Priest clean up takes the total to just over 35,000 pounds of trash that has been collected from Middle TN lakes this school year by Tennessee Bass Nation Anglers and parents.
Holly Winn from Franklin High School Fishing said, “Thank you to Tennessee BASS Nation for sponsoring this event. It was an amazing day cleaning up Percy Priest Lake. As the Mom of an angler, I’ve seen trash on the shore but nothing, and I mean nothing could prepare me for what 6 hours of lake clean up would look like. Going into today I really couldn’t understand how our team, and several others would possibly have enough trash to keep us occupied for 6 hours…boy was I wrong. It’s truly hard to believe how careless people are until you get out there and see it for yourself.”
After thousands of alcohol & beer bottles, hundreds of tires, many TVs, microwaves, coffee machines, buoys, mattresses, recliners along with one couch, basketball goal, refrigerator, and a gun, these five High School Fishing Teams along with one local business (57 people in all) worked with the TWRA and Tennessee Bass Nation to clean up 21,803 pounds of trash from the banks of Percy Priest Lake.
When asked about Franklin High Schools involvement Coach Jason Winn said, “I am very proud of the ten anglers I had that participated. Those ten anglers and a couple of FHS parents cleaned up 6,764 pounds of trash that was collected. It was a great team building activity and a real eye opening experience. The sad thing is that we could do this every day of the year and still wouldn’t have all the trash removed from the banks of Percy Priest”.
