Posts by Nick Carter
Clarks Hill Ditch Bass During March
Clarks Hill bass will soon be moving up and staging for the spawn like they always every year in late February as early March do as water temperatures warm. Some winters in Georgia are dry, and Clarks Hill is known for low-water levels. This year, the lake is 12 feet below full pool as bass hit the…
Read MoreMan Killed In Hunt Camp Fire
A fire in a Greene County hunting camp the weekend before Thanksgiving took the life of an Oconee County man, leaving his wife and two children to mourn his loss over Christmas and the holiday season. In the early hours of the morning on Sunday, Nov. 20, Brandon Carter, 36, of Bishop, was sleeping in…
Read MoreDuck-eating, Monster Brown Trout Caught In Toccoa
Blue Ridge native Hunter Barnes had seen this fish before. He had watched it for two weeks in the tailout of a big run while guiding on the Toccoa River tailwater. A college student and wrestler at UT Chattanooga, Hunter spent the summer guiding, and in one stretch of river he watched a resident mallard…
Read MoreRecord Numbers of Ducks Headed Our Way!
Record numbers of ducks are to the north of us, and duck hunters may see a lot of birds this year based on population estimates from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Also, the limit on scaup has increased from two to four because of those estimates. It was a banner year for breeding duck…
Read MoreNew Lake and River Records Set For Toccoa Rainbow and West Point Flathead
We’ve got a couple of impressive new records to report this month, a big Toccoa River rainbow trout and the coveted West Point flathead catfish record. Last year at this time, GON was reporting on trout populations devastated in the Toccoa River tailrace by warm-water discharges associated with construction at Blue Ridge Dam. A lot…
Read MoreTwo Saltwater State Records Caught
So far this summer, the Georgia coast has produced two new state records for Georgia anglers, a women’s state record for tiger shark and a men’s state record for red grouper. Pam Page, of Savannah, was fishing near artificial reef JY, about 20 miles due east of St. Catherine’s Island, on June 3 when she…
Read MoreAll About Armadillos
Have a pesky armadillo digging up the sod in your yard? Just be glad you don’t have a South American giant armadillo, which can weigh up to 130 pounds and tear up a heck of a lot more landscaping than the little 10-lb. nine-banded armadillos we have in the U.S. GON recently got a letter…
Read MoreHunt North Georgia’s Growing Bear Population
Black bears in metro Atlanta? Georgia’s bear population is on the rise, and these highly mobile critters are showing up more and more in areas where they’re not supposed to be. Odd sightings are especially frequent this time of year, when young males disperse. Larger adult males push young males out of their home ranges…
Read MoreGiant Largemouth Tops 22-year-old Lake Oconee Record
Lake Oconee’s 22-year-old largemouth record was broken the morning of May 14 when lake-resident Bill Brantley caught a 12-lb., 14-oz. fish on a Texas-rigged lizard. Bill and his wife Pam, both of Buckhead, were dragging 6-inch, watermelon-chartreuse lizards off a brushed-up ledge in 15 feet of water. Bass were packed in tight on the ledge,…
Read MorePGA Pro Golfer Catches 56-lb. Savannah River Record Striper
PGA Tour Pro Vaughn Taylor had the week off from golfing. So he went fishing and caught the new Savannah River Record striper on Monday. Vaughn, of Evans, caught the 56-lb., 2-oz. behemoth May 7 on a bucktail jig just below the Clarks Hill Dam. It took him more than 20 minutes to fight and…
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