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Clarks Hill Lake
Lake Strom Thurmond, known by most Georgia fishermen as Clarks Hill Lake, is a reservoir at the border between Georgia and South Carolina in the Savannah River Basin. It was created by the J. Strom Thurmond Dam during 1951 and 1952 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers near the confluence of the Little River and the Savannah River. Fishing for largemouth bass and striped bass in particularly popular at Clarks Hill, and the lake also offers very good shellcracker fishing during the late spring spawn, and there are some giant catfish in the lake. Crappie fishing can also be very good on Clarks Hill. At 71,000 acres, it is the third-largest artificial lake east of the Mississippi River, behind Kentucky Lake on the Tennessee River and Lake Marion on the Santee River. The J. Strom Thurmond Dam is located upstream from Augusta. Clarks Hill is one of the southeast's largest and most popular public recreation lakes.
Clarks Hill Lake Resources
Clarks Hill: Level: 3.1 feet below 330. Temp: 64-70 degrees. Clarity: Slightly stained to clear. Bass: D.J. Hadden, with Hadden Outdoors, says to “scope, scope, scope.” D.J.’s son, Tanner, wins many tournaments, including the recent Super 6 Championship with his uncle. Tanner also won the Gerald Jones Tournament with partner Caleb Hudson. Tanner is an expert with FFS and does guide trips where he will teach you. FFS is not some magic tool. It will help you catch fish, but you must learn to use it. “Water temperatures started to cool the week before Thanksgiving and will drop fast in December,” D.J. said. “That means bait will move back in the pockets and creeks. There will be an early morning ditch bite, and surface activity should be seen early in the month. If you’re not scoping, cast a Spot Choker underspin with a 2.8 or 3.3 Keitech early to bait…
Read MoreClarks Hill Lake Articles
The day was absolutely beautiful. Blue, cloudless skies, no wind, and a high of about 80 degrees. It was Dec. 10, and an unseasonable warm spell had hit the Southeast driving temperatures far higher than their normal. As a result, the water temperature was also on the rise, so the typical winter striper pattern was…
“Year-round, there are fish in this hole,” said Clifford Swygert, who was keeping track of eight rod tips, his depthfinder and his GPS as we slow-trolled over a deep area far up Little River on the South Carolina side of Clarks Hill Lake. “There’s one bumping it,” he said, nodding toward a 12-foot rod off…
The never-ending heat wave was back. With temperatures tickling triple digits and not a cloud in the sky, eight hours on the deck of a boat had Clarks Hill feeling a little like Clarks H-E- you-know-where. However, two key variables turned less-than-ideal fishing conditions into a pretty good day on Georgia’s largest lake. First, a…
Ask a man to produce a 16-lb. bag of largemouths on any given tournament day and he may be able to do it; ask him to do it again and the odds go way down. Patrick Brown from Swainsboro weighed in another 16-pound-plus bag of Eliminator Series bass. On April 10, he won his Round…
Last May, B.A.S.S. anglers Davy Hite and Kevin VanDam were talking after the day-two weigh-in of Bassmaster’s Elite Series tournament on Clarks Hill. Davy had weighed-in back-to-back 20-lb. sacks, and all Kevin had after day two was a pair of 10-lb. bags. Kevin wanted to know just what in the heck Davy was throwing to…
Clarks Hill Lake Record Fish
| Largemouth Bass | 14-lbs., 14-ozs. | Carl Sasser | 02/16/72 |
| Spotted Bass | 5-lbs., 7.2-ozs. | Tanner Hadden | 04/23/2404/23/24 |
| White Bass | 3-lbs., 9-ozs. | Ed Lepley | 03/09/15 |
| Striped Bass | 55-lbs., 12-ozs. | Sam Porter | 05/27/93 |
| Hybrid Bass | 16-lbs., 12-ozs. | Jim Hankinson | ----- |
| Black Crappie | 4-lbs., 8-ozs. | Dewey Marks | 1979 |
| White Crappie | 4-lbs., 12-ozs. | Weldon Clark | 03/30/06 |
| Blue Catfish | 72-lbs., 3-ozs. | Walker Crowe | 05/07/24 |
| Flathead Catfish | 70-lbs. | Michael Dollar | 03/04/23 |
| Channel Catfish | 25-lbs., 2-ozs. | James Gunn | 05/13/93 |
| Yellow Perch | 2-lbs., 8-ozs. | Brad Murphy | 12/89 |
| Sauger | 4-lbs., 3-ozs. | Stuart Bowers | 04/05/86 |
| Warmouth | 13-ozs. | Daniel Rawlins | 04/15/01 |
| White Perch | 1-lb., 4-ozs. | Dennis Franklin | 02/22/15 |
| Shellcracker | 1-lb., 9-ozs. | Kathleen Weeks | 06/23/11 |