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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
The reports were as varied as the weather this week. The best reports came from ponds and the Okefenokee Swamp. Saltwater was hit-and-miss. The southeast Georgia rivers are still high but are falling now that the leaves have budded out and the trees are pulling more water. St. Marys River: The Temple Landing is currently closed while the WRD boat ramp crew rebuilds the ramp. The ramp itself is complete, and the crew is working to improve the parking area. The project is winding down, and it should reopen in early April if weather and river levels cooperate (which they are currently not doing). Okefenokee Swamp: Mike and Matt Rouse fished the east side of the Okefenokee on Saturday in the cool, super-windy weather and still caught fish. They had a few warmouth and fliers on black sparkle/chartreuse Warmouth Whacker Jigs. They also caught a couple bowfin by flinging crawfish-brass…
Read MoreClarks Hill Lake Articles
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 is the largest reservoir in Georgia. At 71,000 acres, it’s a center of outdoor recreation and is one of the best-known lineside fisheries in the state. And well it should be; Ed Bettross is the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division (WRD) fisheries biologist assigned to Clarks Hill, and he has been working cooperatively…
Craig Johnson is one of the most confident anglers I’ve ever had the pleasure of being in the boat with. “I can put the camera down there and show you 50 fish. You can sit there for three hours and not have a bite and then all of a sudden they turn on and you…
Targeting gar over carp proved to be the winning strategy at the Georgia Bowfishing Association’s first annual state championship. The 12-hour, nighttime bowfishing tournament was held from 7 p.m. Saturday evening May 20 through 7 a.m. Sunday May 21 at Lake R.B. Russell. Eighteen three-man teams from Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and North Carolina participated…
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 |
