The Savannah River lakes, including Thurmond, are unique in that there are differences in the size limits for crappie depending on whether you bring your fish out on the South Carolina side or the Georgia side.
In a comprehensive rewrite of the fisheries laws in 2012, the statewide size limit for crappie was set at eight inches, and the daily catch limit was reduced from 30 to 15.
Those limits to not apply in Georgia, where there is no size limit and the daily catch limit is 30 fish.
“We’ve had a really good working relationship with Georgia in managing our border waters. Our reciprocal license agreement makes things more straightforward for the anglers because they don’t have to worry about crossing a line in the lake,” said biologist Dan Rankin of SCDNR. However, Georgia fisheries biologists did not feel the 8-inch, 15-fish limit was needed, he added.
“Usually by age 2 or 3 our crappie are attaining that 8-inch size, which gives the fish time to spawn at least once before being subject to exploitation by anglers, so we are hoping it will help with reproduction in some of our systems,” he said.
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