Warmouth Record Set For Ohoopee River

On a fishing trip when they were slap wearing out the white perch—known as crappie to anglers in some parts of Georgia—leave it to a record-sized warmouth to shake things up.

Thomas Corbin is the Treutlen County Sheriff.

He’s also an avid fisherman and GON subscriber who, particularly in the past 10 years, has been catching lots of fish in the thin waters of the upper Ohoopee River in Treutlen and Emanuel counties. He said the white perch fishing has been really good.

“Up here it’s real swampy and there are a lot of trees,” Thomas said. “To get in some of the areas we fish you have to do a lot of dragging, and in the summer you have to use a canoe. On down the river, it opens up a good bit, but up here it’s not like that.”

Thomas Corbin with his Ohoopee River warmouth caught Oct. 29, 2021 that set a river record with a certified weight of 14.58 ounces.

On Oct. 29, Thomas said the white perch were biting great, and they’d also caught a couple of jacks. They were fishing with minnows. The next bite wasn’t a crappie, it was a dark bulldog of a bream with a big mouth.

“When that one came out of the water, he was thick,” Thomas said of the big warmouth.

On certified scales, the fish weighed 14.58 ounces to set a new river record for the Ohoopee.

The Georgia state record warmouth weighed 2 pounds even, and that record has stood since the fish was caught in a private pond in 1974. The world-record warmouth weighed 2-lbs., 7-ozs. and was caught in Holt, Florida in 1985. The warmouth is part of the sunfish family. They are sometimes confused with green sunfish—or rock bass—which also have a big mouth for a bream. Warmouth are typically a dark, mottled brown color with a golden belly and reddish-brown streaks radiating from behind the eyes. Warmouth have three spines on its anal fin, while green sunfish have five to seven.

Ohoopee River Record Fish

See All Georgia Lake & River Records