Georgia's big reservoirs run on blueback herring: open-water stripers, magnum spotted bass suspended over brush, and topwater dawns when the herring spawn. Lanier, Hartwell and Allatoona give Atlanta three different personalities within ninety minutes of downtown.
Reports current for Friday, September 4
Live verdicts from this morning's reports.
A 56,000-acre Savannah River giant shared by Georgia and South Carolina, famous for stripers and spotted bass.
Atlanta's big water: 38,000 acres of deep, clear Chattahoochee reservoir with magnum spotted bass and a serious striper fleet.
Atlanta's scrappy little sister: a 12,000-acre spotted bass brawl thirty minutes from the city.
The Savannah's 71,000-acre workhorse: hybrids, blueback topwater and Augusta's home water.
The Chattahoochee's tournament lake: grass returning, hybrids reliable, LaGrange's pride.
Georgia's manicured bass lake: docks, seawalls and pulsed current from two dams.
The warm-water winter lake: Oconee's scrappier sibling with year-round shallow bass.
The border grass bowl: hydrilla, big spawners and Spring Creek's glass-clear runs.
The Savannah chain's quiet middle child: no development, big bass and empty water.
North Georgia's gentle giant: a tailwater and freestone in one river, floating trout water through Blue Ridge pastures to the swinging bridge.
The mountain twin-state lake: Georgia-North Carolina water in the Blue Ridge, discreetly elite for hybrids and comeback smallmouth.
Georgia's deep secret: a 450-foot mountain pit with no private docks, magnum spotted bass and stripers chasing herring in the clear.
The Deliverance river fishes gentler than its legend: wild and scenic water where Georgia and Carolina trade casts over wild browns.
The Georgia mountain original: Burton's deep coves grow the state's biggest spotted bass and trout-fed giants under Appalachian ridges.
Georgia's walleye outpost: the TVA's mountain pool where southern gold survives, smallmouth patrol and the Toccoa runs cold below.
The quiet TVA highlander: Nottely's mountain arms grow stripers and spots below Blairsville with the chain's least traffic.
The Flint River wearing a lake costume: Blackshear’s cypress and current grow south Georgia bass, crappie and hybrid stripes.
Trout inside the perimeter: cold Buford releases make the Hooch a year-round trout river running straight through metro Atlanta.
Clarks Hill: 71,000 acres on the Savannah where hybrid and striper schools boil under birds every fall.
Bartletts Ferry: the Chattahoochee’s Georgia-Alabama border lake, full of spotted bass, stripers and dock cover.
Macon’s recreation lake: Tobesofkee holds bass, crappie and hybrids in central Georgia.
Georgia’s shoal bass river: the Flint runs 340 miles from Atlanta’s edge to Lake Seminole.
Species activity across the state's covered waters. Peak of the year: March.
1 = slow, 5 = peak. Current month highlighted.
Seasonal surface curve for this state's dominant water type (estimated).
| Water | Type | County | Live gauge | Peak month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lake Hartwell | Reservoir | Stephens | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Lanier | Reservoir | Forsyth | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Allatoona | Reservoir | Cherokee | USGS | Mar |
| Clarks Hill Lake | Reservoir | Lincoln | USGS | Mar |
| West Point Lake | Reservoir | Troup | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Oconee | Reservoir | Oconee | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Sinclair | Reservoir | Baldwin | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Seminole | Reservoir | Decatur | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Russell | Reservoir | Elbert | USGS | Mar |
| Toccoa River | River | Fannin | modeled | Apr |
| Lake Chatuge | Reservoir | Towns | modeled | Mar |
| Carters Lake | Reservoir | Murray | modeled | Mar |
| Chattooga River | River | Rabun | USGS | Apr |
| Lake Burton | Reservoir | Rabun | modeled | May |
| Blue Ridge Lake | Reservoir | Fannin | modeled | Apr |
| Lake Nottely | Reservoir | Union | modeled | Mar |
| Lake Blackshear | Reservoir | Sumter | USGS | Mar |
| Chattahoochee River | River | Forsyth | USGS | Apr |
| Thurmond Lake | Reservoir | Columbia | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Harding | Reservoir | Harris | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Tobesofkee | Reservoir | Bibb | modeled | Mar |
| Flint River | River | Upson | USGS | Mar |
Georgia's big lakes changed character when blueback herring arrived: Lanier, Hartwell and the Savannah chain became open-water fisheries where spotted bass and stripers chase pelagic bait over 100 feet of water. The fishing rewards electronics and courage with a topwater rod: herring-spawn dawns on clay points, magnum spots over brush at 30 ft, downlined live bait for summer stripers. South Georgia offers a different world: the Satilla and Ogeechee's river bass, and Seminole's grass beds on the Florida line.
March-May is the everything season: herring spawns, bass beds, stripers shallow. Summer pushes the game deep and early: first-light schooling fish, then 30-plus-foot brush by 9 AM. Fall turns the creeks on as bait migrates, and winter concentrates stripers and crappie into patterns steady enough to plan a trip around. Most ramps are Corps-run and excellent.
Blueback herring changed everything: the bass and stripers feed in open water on high-calorie bait, so the fishing is electronics-forward and offshore compared to classic bank beating.
Late April through early June at dawn, when herring spawn on clay points and blowthroughs. Walking baits over the spawns produce the year's most electric fishing.