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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: 3.3 feet below 330. Temp: Low 50s. Clarity: Clear on main lake, some stain from rain in creeks. Bass: D.J. Hadden, with Hadden Outdoors, says, “January can be a really fun month when the weather allows for some nice time on the water. For the most part, fish will move deep in ditches and in timber. I’m going to attack those fish with jigging spoons and a Greenfish Tackle Tutu jig with a Zoom Winged Fluke using forward facing sonar. With any ditch fishing, the bait can get pushed up in the shallows early in the morning. A Damiki Vault or Spot Choker underspin with a Keitech swimbait will get bites. Up the river, the shallow guys can get some quality largemouth bites, but the bite will be less consistent at times. A Rapala No. 7 Shad Rap and a Berkley Frittside can be deadly in January.”…
Read MoreClarks Hill Lake Articles
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District, J. Strom Thurmond Project, Forest, Fish, and Wildlife section have set the dates for primitive weapons deer hunts in Bussey Point Corps Management Unit, located in Lincoln County. The first 100 hunters to arrive each day will be registered on a first-come, first-served basis. Archery hunters are invited…
Michael Dollar, of Raysville, said that flathead catfish in the 70-lb. variety in Clarks Hill aren’t necessarily rare, but catching one on a rod and reel isn’t something you hear much about. Taking that one step further, boating one after an hour-long fight using an ultralight crappie fishing setup using just 6-lb. line may have…
Longer days have Clarks Hill bass stacking up in ditches near spawning areas and feeding heavily on flats near them. This is one of the best months of the year to catch numbers of bass and find a big prespawn female to brag about. No hindsight ip unit displayed. With 72,000 acres on the Savannah…
Georgia’s eastern flank offers some of the best freshwater fishing in the state, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) works to improve bass habitat at the Savannah River reservoirs. The USACE operates three major lakes along Georgia’s border with South Carolina: Lake Hartwell, Richard B. Russell Lake and Clarks Hill Lake. Administratively,…
Georgia has seen three state-record fish in the past four months. Could another record fish have been caught last week? We will never know because the angler chose to release a huge yellow perch that based on measurements would have been close to state-record proportions. Patrick McCorkell was fishing below the Thurmond Dam in the…
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 |