High Falls Lake, All Around Good

At High Falls Lake the fishing can be easy. Just rig up a pole off the end of your dock, go to bed and have sweet dreams of big fish. Wake up the next morning, have a cup of coffee and maybe a little breakfast, then amble down to the dock and reel in a new lake record fish! This funny scenario has happened at High Falls for the record catfish.

Big catfish have become legendary at High Falls. Way back in 1987 Larry Smith officially set a new state record with a 53-lb. flathead. Larry held that mark for six years until Charles Price, of Locust Grove, claimed the new state record in 1993 with another big High Falls flathead. That one weighed 53-lbs., 8-ozs.

Charles’ state-record mark has since been topped by several fish from other parts of the state, but the current High Falls lake record flathead weighs 60 pounds and was caught off a lake dock through a team effort. Hugh Rainey fought the fish on the rod, Bobby Beasley (who lives on High Falls) jumped in the lake to net the fish and Billy Redding helped get the fish out of the water. Teamwork paid off that day! If you’ll flip over to page 92, you’ll see a photo of Hugh with his fish. It’s been exactly 20 years since he caught it, and our Days GON By column tells the story.

Bob Barfield, of Snellville, has a house on the Buck Creek arm of the lake and stays there often. Now retired from Sears, he has a “catch what’s biting” attitude but really likes catfish, crappie and bream fishing. He often catches a lot of fish and stores them in his freezer for fish fries at his church, the Gwinnett Community Church in Lawrenceville. Bob has come close to breaking the lake record for catfish, and he continues to be optimistic that another whopper is out there.

Bob has caught 35- and 55-lb. flatheads off his dock using a small bream and a piece of cut jackfish. Bob uses a baitcasting reel spooled with 20-lb. braided line and a heavy-duty rod for catfish. On the business end, he uses a 1/0 offset hook, an 18-inch leader of the same line, then a swivel and a 3/4-oz. barrel lead weight. He hooks the bream just in front of the top dorsal fin. He then tosses the bait into the main creek channel and sets the rod into a sturdy rodholder. A couple of ringing bells are attached to the top of the rod so he can hear a swaying rod tip from his nearby house. Sweet fishing method!

Bob Barfield caught this 35-lb. flathead off his dock on Sept. 3, 2019 on a big piece of cutbait from a jackfish.

He also let another big flathead get away because he could not get it in the net by himself. He was trolling the main lake with crappie jigs, yes crappie jigs, when he thought he had gotten snagged. But the snag moved! The fish towed him around the lake for 30 minutes before he could ease him up to the surface on the light line and small hook. He got the ugly flathead to the surface, and it rolled over and threw out the jig. He estimated the weight around 40 pounds.

I joined Bob on a fish catching expedition on May 7 at his famous dock. Why is it famous? Not only are big cats caught off the dock, but it was the location of two lake-record crappie catches within 24 hours!

On Thursday, Feb. 26, 2021, Bob was fishing off his dock at night and had only been fishing a few minutes when his cork disappeared. He pulled in a 2-lb., 6-oz. crappie. It broke the old GON lake-record crappie of 2-lbs., 2-ozs. caught by Channing Rice back in March 2012. But that record did not stand for long!

The very next night Bob was catching a lot of big crappie. His hands got cold from dipping them in the cold minnow bucket, so he went inside to warm up, but he left his rigged-up poles in the water. He came back outside a few minutes later to see his young neighbor Ethan Edins pulling in a big crappie from his dock. Ethan saw the pole dancing around in the rodholder and thought the fish might get away, so he hauled it in. Bob thought the fish might be a lake record and had it weighed on certified scales, and sure enough it was a new lake record at 2-lbs., 11-ozs.

Although the picture quality isn’t great, it’s very easy to see this is a slab crappie! The young angler is Ethan Edins, and he’s the current High Falls black crappie record holder with this 2-lb., 11-oz. fish caught Feb. 27, 2021.

So, the lake crappie record was set on two consecutive nights with the same pole on the same dock. Bob is incredibly happy that his young neighbor caught a lake-record fish since it’s something that he will remember for the rest of his life.

On our trip, we tried bass fishing the upper arm of Buck Creek, but the bass were on vacation and not interested in our lures. I managed to catch a few jackfish on a chrome/blue Rattlin’ Rogue and a few crappie on a 1/8-oz. McCorkle Riverspin made by Beaver Spin in Metter. The fish wanted a blue/yellow combo that day.

Bob brought a few crappie to the boat with a Creme curly tail jig in blue/yellow. We talked and decided that catching a few was not going to get it done for a fish fry, so we decided to switch gears to bream.

Bob said the best place to catch bream is where you caught them last year. By trial-and-error, Bob has discovered a few coves that are favored by the bream for bedding in the Buck Creek area. He said you don’t have to travel all over the lake to find fish. Instead, he concentrates his efforts within a 10-minute boat ride of his house.

We hit one past bream hot spot and caught a few, but the fishing was slow, so we moved to another cove. It was nothing special, just a 20-foot spot where a shallow ditch ran into the lake, but the bream were there. We quickly caught about 20, and the action slowed. We headed to the back of another small cove and caught 15 more on red wigglers and Zebco rods and reels. We used No. 6 hooks with a small bb lead weight placed about 1 foot above the hook. I used a slip cork and Bob used no cork and both did well. Really high-tech equipment! He said if you’re bream fishing High Falls for the first time, concentrate around the many docks where homeowners have dropped brush in the backs of shallow coves.

Author John Trussell (left) and Bob Barfield were in a “catch what is biting” mood and rounded up about 35 nice bream for Bob’s church fish fry.

High Falls Lake is a 650-acre impoundment of the Towaliga River in Butts, Monroe and Lamar counties, located just east of Interstate 75 north of Forsyth. The Parks, Recreation and Historic Sites Division of the DNR operates High Falls Lake for recreational purposes that includes sport fishing. The lake is open to fishing during daylight hours only, and the operation of motors greater than 10 hp are prohibited. Boats with outboard motors greater than 10 hp may be mounted to a boat, but the outboard must not be operated.

According to WRD Fisheries Biologist Keith Weaver, who works out of the Walton Office, High Falls Lake continues to provide great fishing for bass, catfish, bream and hybrids. He said natural reproduction keeps the fish populations healthy, according to the results of fish sampling.

Both striped bass and hybrids were stocked until 2006. Striped bass only stockings started in 2007 and were discontinued in 2013 due to the success of the striped bass re-establishment efforts downstream.

Hybrid bass only stockings were continued in 2013. Striped bass numbers will be low if not rare in 2021 as they fade out from the lake. In 2020, there were 4,500 hybrids stocked into the lake.

High Falls is a great catfish fishery comprised of both flathead and channel catfish. Channel catfish numbers have remained steady compared to previous years with strong year-classes coming through. The average lengths of channel catfish in 2021 will be about 14 to 16 inches, but individuals longer than 20 inches are not uncommon.

Flathead catfish are lower in density than channels but offer a trophy fishery to High Falls, with several fish over 20 pounds reported each year, said Weaver. Although flatheads prefer live shad or small bream as bait, they will sometimes hit a cutbait on the bottom, especially if it is slowly trolled on a Carolina-style rig.

Fish deep holes and channel bends in the lower end of the lake for flatheads and channel cats.

Crappie are abundant in High Falls, and Weaver said that anglers can expect 43% of the population to be longer than 8 inches in length. High Falls is known for crappie fishing and is comparable with larger reservoirs in the Piedmont, such as Lake Oconee. Angler reports of catching crappie ranging from 1 to 2 pounds are common.

Trolling jigs above the dam, around drop-offs, points and creek channels is effective in winter and early spring. Minnows and jigs fished in shallow water near brush, stumps or blowdowns are most effective once water temperatures reach 60 degrees in the spring.

Look for submerged timber and stumps near the main channel during late fall and winter. Bob has had good luck on crappie around the limbs and stick-ups in Buck Creek into July.

Bass fishing continues to be very good, said Weaver, and catches of bass in the 1- to 5-lb. range remain common.

Tournament bass angler Brett Cumming, of Gainesville, has been fishing in the High Voltage Bass Anglers tournaments for many years and recommends that other bass fishermen who like to fish smaller lakes check it out. He fished the tournament at High Fall this year and finished third with five bass that weighed 10-lbs., 10-ozs.

He likes to hit the shallow weeds, seawalls and docks in the mornings with a 3/8-oz. willowleaf spinnerbait in white or yellow. For slightly deeper water, he likes a Senko wacky worm with no weight in green-pumpkin color. His backup lure is a Zoom Super Chunk in flippin-blue color. Cumming really likes to work on jonboats to improve their capabilities and has a website, www.deckedoutjonboats.com, devoted to the serious jonboat fisherman, so give it a view.

To find out more about the jonboat bass tournaments, go to highvoltagebassanglers.net or contact Donnie Boone at [email protected].

For local bait and supplies, try Lakeside Bait and Tackle at 356 Buck Creek Road. For overnight lodging, try High Falls State Park at 478.993.3053.

Give High Falls Lake a try. It’s an all around good fishery worth your time.