My magazine articles took me to two lakes as different as two can be in Georgia and Alabama. Both are about two hours from Griffin but that is just about all they have in common, other than both being great places to catch bass in December.

Lake Blackshear is south of us between Americus and Cordele on the Flint River. Most of it is shallow, with miles of cypress trees growing in the water. There are grassbeds and old docks with wooden post and brush piles. Up the river hundreds of acres of cypress swamp have four or five feet of water around them where it would be easy to get lost.

When fishing your boat will seldom be in more than five feet of water. Largemouth abound in the lake and the water is often murky to muddy. Even when clear it has a brownish tannic tint.

I fished with Stephen Birchfield, a basketball and fishing team coach at nearby Bruton Parker College. His family has a house in Swift Creek on the lake and he fishes it a lot. We had a good day, hooking several largemouth in the two-pound range.

Bruton Parker is a small Baptist College. With only about 350 students, everyone knows everyone there and there is a good sense of community among the students. Stephen told me they are planning on giving some fishing scholarships next year and hope to have 20 fishermen on the bass team.

If you are a high school senior and love to fish, and a small college appeals to you, check out their web site at http://www.bpc.edu/. And you will get to fish Lake Blackshear a lot!

Getting to Blackshear is easy on I-75 or
Highway 19. Veterans State Park is about half way up the river from the dam and has great facilities. There are several smaller ramps scattered around the lake, too.

Lake Wedowee is west of us past Lagrange on the Tallapoosa and Little Tallapoosa Rivers. Highway 431 crosses the upper end of the Little Tallapoosa north of Wedowee, Alabama. Filled in 1983, it is one of Alabama Power Company’s newest lake. Several people from Griffin built houses on the lake when it first filled.
Prices of lots and houses there have dramatically increased over the past 20 years, with many huge mansions on the water now.

The rivers and some of the lower lake, as well as the creeks, have bluff rock banks that drop into 30 plus feet of water. There is standing timber along many of them. Your boat will usually be sitting over water more than 30 feet deep when you are casting to the bank. The docks there may have a few posts but in the winter they are out of the water due to the drawdown. All have a floating platform in front that goes up and down with the water.

Although the lower lake remains very clear most of the year, the rivers do get muddy after heavy rains. Spotted bass abound but average about a pound each. There are big ones there, tournament stringers often have several over three pounds each. And there are some big largemouth, Tom Tanner landed one over eight pounds in a Potato Creek Bassmasters tournament there last March.