Excellent fishing opportunities abound during the summer on Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie, and one of the most-productive places to be is the Diversion Canal, the stretch of water linking the two lakes that provides sensational catfishing around the clock.
South Carolina boasts 47 state parks, most of which are located on or near a body of water. Each park is unique and so are their fishing opportunities. […]
Wyn Mullins prepared a perfect summer setup for catching big fish. His boat was anchored on a Cooper River channel ledge at sunrise, just upstream from the junction of a small creek. […]
Last July, the New River appeared similar but also different than 42 years earlier, the last time I floated the stream in a canoe. It was 1974, and local residents and conservation organizations were fighting a plan to dam the pristine river that crosses the northwestern corner of North Carolina. Back then, no guides carried fishing parties on the river, and no businesses catering to anglers and paddlers had sprouted along its banks. […]
Most anglers who love catching bream are looking forward to the fall, when the days are still plenty hot, but are bookended by cooler mornings and evenings. […]
After failing to make Bassmaster’s top 10 list for the previous three years, and not even making the top 100 list in 2012, Santee Cooper is back, in a major way. The lake system, consisting of Lakes Marion and Moultrie, and locally referred to as the Upper and Lower Lakes, is ranked number two on the list of best bass lakes in the nation. […]
Lookout Shoals isn’t one of the biggest reservoirs in North Carolina, but its relative small size, 1,200 acres on the Catawba River between Lake Hickory and Lake Norman, is a big factor in it being one of the state’s best summer lakes for bass fishing.
Lake Marion anglers are fascinated by shellcrackers, aka redear sunfish, for a variety of reasons, size being one. For a species lumped in with a variety of sunfish collectively called “bream”, the shellcracker is a giant.
Restoring the striped bass fishery on the Santee Cooper lakes with the 26-inch size minimum,a three-fish creel limit, and closed summer season was the goal of a seven-year plan formulated by the Santee Cooper Striped Bass Stakeholders Committee and the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.
Shellcracker spawning time in Lake Marion depends on water temperature and other physical factors, but anglers can gauge the peak bedding season by the myriad of boat trailers lining roads leading to launching ramps. Long walks are expected, even welcomed by many, because it means shellcrackers are bedding.
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