Lakes Seminole, Demopolis and Hartwell are about as diverse as you can get in out area of the world.
I got to fish all three in the past two weeks and enjoyed them all but got very frustrated at Hartwell.

Demopolis on the Black Warrior and Tombigbee rivers in south western Alabama is narrow and long, with big sloughs off the old river channels that are very shallow and full of grass.  It is full of three pound largemouth with a good mixture of spotted bass mixed in.

Seminole in extreme south western Georgia on the
Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers is bordered by Georgia, Alabama and Florida. It has miles of big, open water but it is so shallow much of it covers in grass in the summer.  It is full of big largemouth, four and five pounders are common.

Hartwell is a deep, clear lake on the upper Savannah River in north east Georgia, bordered on the east by South Carolina.  Big open, deep water is the norm, but it has many smaller creeks and branches off it, but they are deep, too.

I fished Demopolis with local guide Russell Jones and he caught several nice bass up to five pounds on topwater early.  The shad were spawning in the grass way back in a slough – we had to idle for ten minutes to get to it – and the bass liked his frog.

I love the river lakes in Alabama. They are totally different from what we have around here.  There is almost always current on them, something we seldom see on our lakes. The current makes the bass feed better, especially in the summer.

I wish Lake Seminole was not so far from us.  It is the best lake in Georgia to catch four and five pounders right now. The vast grass beds offer perfect spawning and feeding areas for largemouth, and they grow fast and big. 

I fished Seminole with local guide Paul Tyre and he got a nice bass on top early, then we rode and looked at spots that will be good to fish in June. We didn’t fish much since it was a cold day for May and he needed to get home, it was Mother’s Day!

Lakes like Seminole are fun to fish since you can catch bass on topwater most of the time.  And the average size of the fish there makes it a good place to catch your personal best largemouth.

Paul specializes in guiding fishermen to the biggest largemouth they have ever caught. It may not be huge, for a young visitor it may be five pounds.  But he has guided his clients to several ten pound plus largemouth the past three years, too.

He is proud of the fact he guided 50 people to their personal best largemouth two years ago, increased that to 87 last year and is in line to improve that this year with 53 so far, including a 14-year-old that landed a ten pounder last month. 

The next week i went to Lake Hartwell