On a Tuesday in 2007 about this time of year I went to Lake Lanier and met Todd Goade to get information for a Georgia Sportsman article on crappie fishing. Although the article won’t run until next April I needed to get information and pictures to meet a deadline.

Todd lives in Buford near the lake and told me many of the ramps were closed. We met at Old Federal Park and the parking lot was full, even on a Tuesday afternoon. With so few ramps open the fishermen and boaters are concentrated at the few still usable.

Even at Old Federal three of the four ramps were closed. They stopped short of the water. The one ramp that was open ended in a flat sandy area and we were able to launch and take his boat out but it was shallow. It won’t be useable for long if the lake keeps dropping as predicted.

We ran about 12 miles up the river to Wahoo Creek and had no problems. Contrary to claims you hear, there is a lot of water still in the lake. Although the lake is about 16 feet low there is water near the dam over 100 feet deep. On the run up the river we were in water 40 feet deep or deeper most of the way.

The water supply problem at Lanier is the water intakes, like the ramps, end and the water is going to drop below the intakes. That still leaves a lot of water in the lake.

Most of the docks we saw had been moved out to deeper water and we fished many back in coves with 17 feet of water under them. Unfortunately, the crappie did not cooperate. Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was just my luck. I still had a great time fishing with Todd.

Lanier may reached its record level when it droped four more feet by early December. In 1982 it was four feet lower than it was in November, 2007. We had a drought 25 years ago, too, and many lakes were extremely low. Clark’s Hill was 18 feet low that year and it was only 11 feet low in November, 2007, so it has a way to go to reach that point.

Its kinda funny that some are blaming this drought on Global Warming. Back in the early 80s during the last drought some of the same folks were claiming that one was due to Global Cooling and were still predicting a new ice age. Funny how things change but stay the same.