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Fishing
Latest Fishing Articles
Don’t underrate the positive side effects of a crappie fishing experience, even in the hot summer months, on Lake Eufaula. In fact, “crappie therapy” is the label that Alabama angler Mark Martin frequently uses in his social media posts. He has a healthy following on Facebook and posts frequent pictures of his crappie catches there.…
Dale Williams is the new poster child for where’s there’s a will, there’s a way. His ingenuity recently paid off with him catching his largest bluegill ever. The Vidalia resident’s 1-lb.. 2.56-oz. bluegill was recently certified as the largest ever recorded from the Ohoopee River. “We have a small house on the river that has…
Blackshear’s Herman Hill keeps his fish grease sizzling for much of the year. “Once the crappie stop spawning, I start getting ready for warmouth,” he says. The 75-year-old Wayne County resident has been fishing for warmouth for decades. The sunfish he catches usually end up in a skillet of hot grease, but the warmouth he…
James Moore thought he had seen everything in his more than seven decades of fishing, but he had never seen the likes of whatever it was on his line on the Savannah River the other day. “I usually go fishing about every other week,” the 74-year-old Harlem resident said. “I’ve been doing that since my…
On May 31, I called my fishing buddy and striper mentor Perry Nichols, and we talked about a plan to fish for stripers on the Etowah River (we call it the “E”) on Friday, June 3. We planned to take Perry’s jet boat, which is larger than mine, and Perry invited his nephew-in-law Allann Moroni…
Bass Fishing
Brian Tidwell, of Seneca, S.C., caught a five-bass limit weighing 20 pounds even Saturday to win the Phoenix Bass Fishing League (BFL) Presented by T-H Marine on Lake Hartwell. Hosted by the City of Lavonia, the tournament was the third event of the season for the BFL Savannah River Division. Tidwell earned $3,684 for his…
Jonathan Ray considers Lake Lanier his home lake, but the Ball Ground resident likes to venture to Lake Allatoona several times each year. He plans to go to the Stamp Creek section of the lake a lot more in the future. All Jonathan did was what all bass fishermen dream of but what few accomplish.…
Hybrid Fishing
With a hint of excitement in his voice, Lake Juliette fishing guide Jeff Mooney said, “Watch that pole, it’s going down!” He pointed at the rod next to Bob Turner and, as Jeff predicted, a slight bend in the rod became a deep arc toward the water as the striper pulled out line and the…
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…
Josh McDonald, of Americus, caught a hybrid bass on April 4 that weighed 7-lbs., 11.84-ozs. that sets a benchmark for a brand-new river record on GON’s Georgia Lake and River Records list. He was spending the day with his older brother Jason and his twin brother Justin. “We are all baseball coaches, so we never…
Striper Fishing
The day of striper fishing on West Point for Mike Steele, of Dallas, was pretty-danged boring until it wasn’t. It ended with him landing a 40-lb. striper that’s a new lake record. He has his buddy Mike Bartlett to thank, and Bartlett wasn’t even the net man. “My buddy and I had fished from daylight…
The Georgia Chapter of Safari Club International (SCI) hosted 31 Purple Heart recipients during its annual Wounded Veterans Fishing Weekend at Lake Lanier July 7-9. Georgia SCI has hosted the event for more than a decade, providing a full weekend of fishing and fun on Lake Lanier for wounded veterans and their guests. The three-day event,…
With a hint of excitement in his voice, Lake Juliette fishing guide Jeff Mooney said, “Watch that pole, it’s going down!” He pointed at the rod next to Bob Turner and, as Jeff predicted, a slight bend in the rod became a deep arc toward the water as the striper pulled out line and the…
Catfish Fishing
Flathead catfish are spawning on rocks at Clarks Hill right now, and you can have fun catching them for the next two months. Go after a mess to eat, or try to break the lake record—but be forewarned, breaking a catfish record at Clarks Hill will require a monster fish! The flathead record was set…
Just how big are some of the catfish swimming in the waters of Lake Sinclair? We can confirm right at 80 pounds! A new Lake Sinclair record blue catfish was caught this weekend by Guy Covington, of Social Circle, that pulled the certified scales to 79.5 pounds. And Guy released the beast back into Sinclair…
On the afternoon of Jan. 26, long-time buddies Brandon Pitts and Kenny Scott set out on Lake Sinclair in hopes of wrangling some big stripers. Finding gizzard shad of a suitable size for bait proved to be difficult, forcing the anglers to alter their game plan. Unbeknownst to them, it put them on a path…
Crappie Fishing
Ever thought about why crappie gravitate to the shallows in the springtime? To spawn, you say? Well, yeah… but why do they do that? Let that swim around for a bit… Let’s get you in those shallows— specifically on Lake Oconee—and looking for crappie in April as they do their thing around brush and rocks…
Aaron Jenkins calls Canton, N.C. home now, but his heart will forever be in east Georgia. He makes the three-hour trip home to crappie fish with his dad, Keith, whenever he can. As far as Aaron is concerned, there’s only one Georgia lake in which to fish for crappie. The 31-year-old grew up fishing on…
Just days after releasing the annual edition of the Georgia Lake and River Records, another river record has already fallen. On Feb. 6, Steven Todd, of Saint George, managed to reel in a 2-lb., 1-oz. black crappie that raised the river-record bar for the species for the second time in the past 13 months. “I…
Bream Fishing
A record is a record, whether you catch it on a cricket or some new-fangled bladed bait. “I like to watch that cork,” said Dylan Durrence, the angler who just broke the new Ohoopee River bluegill record with a fish that weighed 1-lb. 7.52-ozs. on certified scales at Layne’s Sport Shop on Highway 280 in…
Lake Seminole has miles of shallow sandy grass flats and sandbars that are ideal shellcracker bedding areas. Head south to Seminole in April and May with an eye toward panfish, and you are in for some fantastic fishing. Seminole is formed where the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers join to form the Apalachicola River just inside…
If anywhere is blessed with river fishing opportunities like that of south Georgia, I haven’t heard of the place, and if it does exist, I’m looking to buy property there. It’s true, no matter where you are in the southern portion of the state, some great river fishing is never far away. Altamaha, Ogeechee, Flint,…
Saltwater Fishing
A Richmond Hill man has set a new Georgia state record category for a queen triggerfish (Balistes vetula), weighing in at 7-lbs., 0.58-ozs. The fish is a new species in the Georgia Saltwater Game Fish Program and no prior record existed. The records program committee, made of Department of Natural Resources (DNR) staff and biologists,…
I don’t know if there’s a month I like better than April. With winter fading away quickly, warmer days are here, and the fishing will be fantastic! Just like their freshwater cousins, the bite takes off in the salt this month as reds, flounder, trout and sheepshead all become increasingly active with warming water temperatures.…
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) today announced a new state record for almaco jack. Hayden W. Mundy, 24, of Midway, reeled in an almaco jack weighing 19-lbs., 10.53-ozs., while fishing offshore on March 14, 2024, shattering the previous record by nearly 180 percent. Mundy’s record-breaking catch surpasses the previous record of 7-lbs., 0.7-ozs., set…
Trout Fishing
It was hours—three or more—and the trout fishing was slow from the git-go. Early March can be that way on the upper Toccoa River, where and when the water temperature is still in the mid-40s under continued-cold nighttime skies that leave frost behind at daylight. It can be downright cold—oftentimes, in the low 20s—in the…
As the end of March draws near, trout stocking trucks are loading up high-quality trout to head to your favorite north Georgia waterways. Over 200,000 trout are ready for stocking. Thanks to the long-standing partnership between the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resource Division (GADNR WRD) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service…
“Bigger is better!” It’s a common phrase in many circles, and that turn of words might be heard most where fishing takes place… but maybe not in the circles of Georgia fly-fishermen who target trout on Peach State waters. When you join the fold of fly-fishermen who chase trout in Georgia, more often than not,…
Other Georgia Fishing
One of the keys to being a good fisherman is being observant. North Hall High School senior Charlie White was fishing for bass off his grandparent’s dock on Lake Lanier when he noticed a change. “My grandparents have one of those green lights in the water off their pier, and I noticed that the bass…
Emerson Mulhall, of Cumming, caught a yellow perch that has tied the state record. He was fishing Lake Burton on Feb. 18 when caught the 2-lb., 9-oz. fish. “I was not pursuing perch when I caught her,” said Emerson. “I am mainly a spotted bass and largemouth fisherman, and my friend Jake Maddux and I…
Now that April Waldrop has been bitten by the record fish bug, the Hogansville woman has set her sights on something even bigger. April was fishing for gar with her husband, Larry, and her two sons on West Point Lake recently when she landed a lake-record longnose gar that weighed 23 pounds. The 52 1/2-inch…