Black Crappie Record Broken On Lake Rabun

On the morning of Oct. 22, Jeff Payne, of Toccoa, caught a black crappie weighing 1-lb., 15-ozs. with a length of 15 1/2 inches on Lake Rabun. It was about 7:30 in the morning when Jeff got to the lake to go fishing.

“I usually try to get there before daylight,” said Jeff.

Once out on the lake, Jeff began his usual routine of underwater grassbeds. While using his spinning rod and a small crankbait, he threw his first cast in the water and caught a fish. In the same spot, he threw another cast and caught the new record crappie that weighed 2 pounds.

“(It was in) about 20 feet of water above the weedbed where I caught the 2-lb. crappie on my second cast,” said Jeff.

On his third cast, he caught another crappie but was unable to pull it up to the boat.

After fishing for a while, he was able to catch 18 fish in total, which included black crappie, bass and yellow perch. Around 12 p.m., Jeff decided to call it a day and put his boat on the trailer and figure out what his black crappie weighed.

“I weighed him on my scale that I had on the boat, and it said the fish weighed about 2 pounds, but I knew it was off a little bit,” said Jeff.

After he weighed the fish himself, he took it to WRD’s Burton Trout Hatchery where it weighed 1-lb., 15-ozs. and beat the previous lake record, which was a crappie that weighed 1-lb., 14-ozs.

This is not the first time Jeff has caught a record fish from Lake Rabun. On March 5, 2018, he caught a spotted bass that weighed 6-lbs, 2-ozs.

Click here to see all of Georgia’s official Lake & River Records.