FINALLY, A Lake Blackshear Record Bass

Clint Brownlee of Tifton is the first to hold the largemouth- bass record for Lake Blackshear. Clint caught the 11-lb., 3.52-oz. bass during a Tuesday night pot tournament.

Since 1990, GON has been compiling lake and river records for 36 Georgia lakes and rivers. Over that period the largemouth-bass record at Lake Blackshear remained unfilled. Not anymore. We finally received documentation on a largemouth entry — and it’s a good one.

On Tuesday evening, June 5, Clint Brownlee of Tifton was fishing with partner Gerry Gray in Larry Marchbank’s pot tournament. At about 8:30 p.m. Clint and Gerry were up the lake casting Texas-rigged plastic worms (green pumpkin) to a lighted dock when the lake-record bass hit.
The fish weighed in on tournament scales at 11.44 pounds. Three days later when the fish was weighed on certified scales the weight was 11.22 pounds.

“We won the tournament with 18 pounds,” said Clint. “Second place was 10 pounds, so we would have won with that one bass. Larry has been holding those tournaments for a long time, and he said it was the biggest bass he had ever weighed in.”

A first-time record for white bass at Lake Rabun was caught on June 5, too. Shannon Sutton of Clarkesville enjoys going fishing with her husband, Rodney.

“It’s something we can do together as husband and wife,” she said. “A lot of times we take our three kids with us, too.”

Shannon and Rodney occasionally fish pot tournaments on the mountain lakes, and on June 5 they were bass fishing on Lake Rabun practicing for an upcoming tournament.

“I was fishing with a plastic worm,” said Shannon. “I think it was called a wavey worm, green pumpkin and chartreuse in a swirl pattern. It is a Senko-type worm. Rodney was making fun of the worm. He said it wouldn’t catch any fish.”

As the evening turned out, Shannon caught a 3-lb. largemouth, lost a spotted bass in the 4 1/2-lb. range and also landed a new white-bass lake record for Rabun on the wavey worm.

“Rodney didn’t catch anything,” said Shannon.

The big white bass hit about 7 p.m.

“I told Rodney that it was fighting pretty hard,” she said. “He thought it was probably a big spot. Then when it came up he said, ‘What a white bass!
That’s got to be the lake record!’ He had never caught a white bass from Rabun.”

The fish was taken to the WRD Lake Burton Hatchery where the 17 3/4-inch-long fish was weighed on certified scales at 2-lbs., 4.8-ozs.

GON publishes the entire list of lake and river records each spring. The records are also available on our website at http://gon.com/fishing/georgia-lake-river-records.

To submit a fish, have it weighed as soon as possible on scales certified by the Department of Agriculture. Write down the name and phone numbers of two witnesses to the weight, the name of the scale operator, and the certification number on the scale. Next have the species of fish verified by WRD Fisheries personnel at any regional office, fish hatchery or PFA. Phone numbers are listed in the fishing-regulations booklet. Send the name of the WRD employee who identified the fish along with a picture of you and the fish to: GON, Lake and River Records, 4331 Seven Islands Road, Madison, GA. 30650. If you have questions, call (800) 438-4663.