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Lake Hartwell
Lake Hartwell is a 56,000-acre Corps of Engineers reservoir bordering Georgia and South Carolina on the Savannah, Tugaloo and Seneca rivers. Lake Hartwell is one of the southeast's largest and most popular recreation lakes, and it offers good fishing, particularly for bass and stripers. Three recent Bassmaster Classic tournaments have been held at Hartwell. The lake is created by Hartwell Dam located on the Savannah River 7 miles below the point where the Tugaloo and Seneca rivers join to form the Savannah. Interstate 85 crosses Lake Hartwell at the Georgia-South Carolina line.
Lake Hartwell Resources
The NPFL returns to Lake Hartwell to kick off stop #2 of the 2024 NPFL Season. With the 2024 Championship event behind us, the NPFL returns to action this week at Green Pond Landing, on the famous Lake Hartwell. Hosted by Anderson County, Lake Hartwell produced for the NPFL field in April of 2022, where Drew Six took the victory by targeting deep spawning fish, and outlasted the shad spawn bites as the final scales closed. Collin Smith This year, a month later in the season with several natural factors at play, Lake Hartwell is looking a lot different. Colin Smith knows the lake as well as anyone in the field and says despite May and June being two of his favorite months to fish, it might be a tougher week than most expected due to major weather that swept through the area recently. “We have had it all recently—crazy…
Read MoreLake Hartwell Fishing Articles
Representatives of the S.C. Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR), the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GADNR) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) will hold a meeting at the Anderson Civic Center to give an overview and status update to anglers on cooperative striped bass fishery management programs undertaken by the three agencies. Interested members…
Lake Hartwell was clear last weekend, May 11, 2019, as high school anglers competed. The water temps were hovering in the mid to upper 70s in the main lake and upper 60s to lower 70s in the upper end in the Tugaloo State Park arm of the lake. The fishing on Lake Hartwell is good…
Hartwell largemouth and spots have spawning on the mind in April, and you can catch both on predictable prespawn and postspawn patterns, as well as on the bed, this month. Then near the end of the month both species will be concentrating on the herring spawn and feeding heavily, an exciting time to fish Lake…
Over the last few years, Lake Hartwell anglers have expressed concern about the declining numbers of striped bass in the lake. “We attribute the decline in the striped bass population to low levels of dissolved oxygen found down deep where striped bass live during the summertime,” said WRD fisheries biologist Anthony Rabern. “Droughts and floods…
Spots and largemouth at Hartwell respond to cooling water by moving shallow and feeding heavily in October. You can catch them on a variety of baits on main-lake points and humps, as well as on banks leading into coves. Hartwell is a big 56,000-acre reservoir on the upper Savannah River. The lake regularly produces 20-lb.…
Lake Hartwell Record Fish
| Largemouth Bass | 12-lbs., 6.5-ozs. | Jack Breshears | 03/08/76 |
| Spotted Bass | 5-lbs., 6.08-ozs. | Raulie Bleech | 03/18/07 |
| Redeye Bass | 3-lbs., 7-ozs. | Steve Williams | 04/17/04 |
| Striped Bass | 59-lbs., 8-ozs. | Terry McConnell | 02/03/02 |
| Hybrid Bass | 20-lbs., 1-oz. | Buster Green | ----- |
| White Bass | 4-lbs., 5-ozs. | H.T. Davis | 02/06/67 |
| White Crappie | 4-lb., 4-ozs. | Charles McCullough | 04/27/68 |
| Black Crappie | 3-lbs., 1.76-ozs. | Jimmy Burns | 03/02/22 |
| Walleye | 9-lbs. | T.O. Sherriff | 1974 |
| Blue Catfish | 30-lbs., 8-ozs. | Melvin Wall | 06/26/03 |
| Flathead Catfish | 66-lbs. | Darrin Sealey | 04/04/10 |
| Shellcracker | 1-lb., 4.16-ozs. | DJ Hill | 05/13/23 |
| Chain Pickerel | 2-lbs., 5-ozs. | Jay Franklin | 03/16/23 |