Advertisement
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: 0.5 feet below 435. Temp: 69-75 degrees. Clarity: Mostly clear. Bass: Guide Nick Knapp, with Elite Guide Service, reports, “During the month of November, look for the largemouth to be moving from the points and humps toward the backs of pockets and coves. Water temperature has drastically decreased with the cooler nights we have been having. Some spots I would try in November are the small pockets in Lick Creek. My go-to bait this time of year is a squarebill crankbait early, followed by a 1/2-oz. black/blue or green-pumpkin flipping jig. The water clarity for the most part is clear right now, so natural colors have been working for the crankbaits.” Stripers: Capt. Doug Nelms, with BigFishHeads Guide Service, reports, “November is the month the gulls and terns return on Lake Oconee. They will spend the winter feeding off the tons of tiny shad that live here. We…
Read MoreLake Oconee Articles
Since Lake Oconee first filled with water in 1979, I’ve seen a lot of changes take place on this middle Georgia lake, some good, some not so good. I’ve been guiding on Lake Oconee since 1980 and watched as the changes slowly took place. In the early 1980s, Lake Oconee was a lake with miles…
Jonathan Clifton, of Siloam, holds the current channel catfish record for Lake Oconee with a 34-lb., 8-oz.. fish he caught on May 31, 1998.
This Oconee slab wasn’t weighed until more than 24 hours after it was caught, but it still tipped the scale at 3-lbs., 12-ozs. Edward Rhodes, of Suwanee, caught the lake-record crappie Feb. 10, 1997 while trolling a 2-inch spit-tail grub tipped with a minnow.
The lake record for striped bass at Oconee was set May 10, 1996 when an Eatonton angler boated a 29-lb., 15-oz. striper. Fred Worthy was downlining a live shad 15 feet deep while fishing the buoy line at the dam when the big lineside hit. The striper hit the first shad Fred put in the…
The air had a brisk bite as I idled through the dense early morning fog toward the nearby creek channel. The fish had been holding in this area for about three weeks, moving only slightly as the water slowly cooled. The sound of screaming gulls, mufHed only by the sound of cars passing over the…
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 |