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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
Pulling live blueback herring during a striper tournament paid off in more ways than one. The boat placed second in the Clarks Hill Striper Club tournament, and one of the anglers set a new lake record for spotted bass. Riley Hale was fishing with Capt. Ed Lepley and Kenny Brooks during the tournament this past…
Bass at Clarks Hill are on all three stages of the spawn in March. You can catch bass by targeting spawning areas, and you can catch them on a variety of baits. On the lower lake you are likely to have a mixed bag of spotted bass and largemouth, but up the Georgia Little River…
Live-bait fishing for hybrids and stripers can be crazy good this time of year on Clarks Hill, with limits in minutes when the fish are bunched on points and humps feeding on herring—if you’re there at the right time. If you’d like to see proof, take a look at fishing guide Eddie Mason’s Facebook page…
Bass at Clarks Hill are feeding on main-lake humps all summer, but you have to find the right humps and the right depths to catch these bass consistently. When you find the right places, fat 2- and 3-pounders are common, with a few 4s and an occasional 5-pounder in the mix. Clarks Hill is our…
Somehow, somewhere along the line, the whole video game thing managed to pass me by. Guess there were better things to do with my metacarpus at the time. Making a living, for example. But after a day on Clarks Hill Lake looking for—and AT—bunches of crappie with Troy Thiel, I could easily find myself working…
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 |