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Lake Oconee
Lake Oconee is an excellent fishing lake located in central Georgia on the Oconee River near Greensboro, the real Buckhead and Eatonton. Oconee is known for very good bass fishing, great crappie fishing for huge slabs, and very good fishing for linesides and catfish. The lake was created in 1979 when Georgia Power completed the construction of the Wallace Dam on the Oconee River. Lake Oconee runs through Georgia's Morgan, Greene, and Putnam counties and is separated from its sister lake, Sinclair, by Wallace Dam. Lake Oconee is home to a number of golf communities, including Reynolds Plantation, Cuscawilla, and Harbor Club.
Lake Oconee Resources
Oconee: Level: 0.3 feet below 435. Temp: 58-62 degrees. Clarity: The north and south end of the lake is clear, but it’s muddy mid lake on the Oconee side. Clear in Richland. Bass: Guide Nick Knapp, with Elite Guide Service, reports, “April is a month when a lot of things happen on this lake. You have the spawn coming to an end and the shad spawn beginning. Look for any rocky backs with shad on them. I like throwing a 1/2-oz. Booyah spinnerbait and a pearl-white fluke on a 1/2-oz. jig head. Any of the bridges will have shad spawning on them. It’s a great time of year to catch some big ones on Lake Oconee. I really like the bridges in Lick Creek first thing in the morning for targeting fish this time of year. April is one of the best months, so get out there and catch some.”…
Read MoreLake Oconee Articles
Bass fishing at Lake Oconee can be fantastic in May. The weather has stabilized, most of the bass are done spawning and are on predictable patterns, and they are feeding heavily. Throw in the end of the shad spawn, and you can have some of the best action of the year. As anyone who has…
Lineside fishermen on several middle Georgia lakes will see a change in future years. A plan to begin phasing in the stocking of stripers and phasing out the stocking of hybrids was introduced by WRD Fisheries biologists at a public meeting in Milledgeville last month. Lakes feeding the Altamaha River basin that over the past…
Robbie Sowash wanted to be on the water right at 7 o’clock. “Daylight,” I thought. “Is there an early bite on Oconee? It’s mid January.” I must confess. It had been quite a while since my feet were planted on the deck of a boat while I chunked bass lures into my home waters of…
Even when the water is January cold, you can catch a mess of crappie. According to our three experts, who catch crappie with three different techniques in January, you just have to fish a little deeper, and a little slower. When the surface temperatures of Georgia reservoirs drop during the winter, the fish move into…
This month you can bury those jigging spoons back down into your tackle box and start throwing something a little more horizontal. In mid February, Lake Oconee’s water temperature was still in the upper 40s, but it was slowly warming. Some fish had already begun to move shallow around wood cover and rock. As we…
Lake Oconee Record Fish
| Largemouth Bass | 12-lbs., 14-ozs. | Bill Brantley | 05/14/12 |
| Hybrid Bass | 14-lbs., 4-ozs. | Jan Allen Ward | 04/03/91 |
| Striped Bass | 29-lbs., 14.9-ozs. | Fred Worthy | 05/10/96 |
| Black Crappie | 3-lbs., 12-ozs. | Edward Rhodes | 02/10/97 |
| Channel Catfish | 34-lbs., 8-ozs. | Jonathan Clifton | 05/31/98 |
| Blue Catfish | 70-lbs., 2-ozs. | Koob Moua | 03/22/23 |
| Flathead Catfish | 62-lbs., 10.4-ozs. | Rob Allgood | 03/11/23 |
| White Bass | 3-lbs., 6-ozs. | Tony Couch | 04/02/93 |
| Longnose Gar | 20-lbs., 13-ozs. | Dustin Turk | 10/05/19 |
| Chain Pickerel | 1-lb., 2-ozs. | Terry Brice | 03/05/17 |
| Spotted Bass | 5-lbs., 3.2-ozs. | Austin Skinner | 03/19/22 |
| Shellcracker | 1-lb., 14.56-ozs. | Randy Smith | 04/23/22 |
| Yellow Perch | 11-ozs. | John Moore | 02/16/23 |