The author shows off the kind of winter largemouths that docks on Lake Sinclair give up. Photo courtesy of Ronnie Garrison.

Along its 170-mile course from its hilly beginnings north of Athens to the flatlands where it joins the Ocmulgee near Lumber City, the Oconee River passes through some beautiful country. But to bass fishermen, no stretch of the river is prettier than the 45 miles contained in Lake Oconee and Lake Sinclair.

Oconee and Sinclair offer some of the best bass fishing in Georgia, especially in the winter. Although the lakes are back to back on the river, the Oconee's Wallace Dam separating the two, they have many similarities, but are different in many ways. Those differences and similarities are important to the bass fishing on each.

Its 19,050 acres of water impounded in 1979, Lake Oconee is the newer of the two. It has 374 miles of shoreline covered with golf courses, expensive houses and docks. Areas of huge boulders will be found in parts of the lake, and natural rock is common. Shallow, sandy coves and clay points are found throughout the lake, as are big areas of standing timber.

Lake Sinclair is smaller -- 14,750 acres -- and older than Oconee. It has more long creek arms, and thus slightly more shoreline, 417 miles. Although work on Sinclair Dam was started in 1929, the Great Depression and World War II put a stop to construction, and the lake wasn't completed until 1953. Many sandy coves and shallow creeks with extensive grassbeds are present, but no standing timber. Some natural rock is in the lake, but you won't find the big boulders common at Oconee. Like Oconee, Sinclair is lined with docks.

Lake Sinclair has always had a 12-inch size limit on bass, but at Oconee, a slot limit from 11 to 14 inches is in force -- you can keep bass over or under those measurements. That was imposed in an effort to suppress the population of small bass, since Oconee is not a fertile lake. But fishermen seldom keep the smaller bass, so the slot limit may not be very effective. Both lakes have a 10-bass daily possession limit.

Water clarity is similar at both lakes, ranging from very muddy to slightly stained. The Oconee River feeding Lake Oconee is most likely to be muddy, while the Little River on Sinclair stays heavily stained year 'round. The clearest water on Sinclair usually is in Island and Rocky creeks near the dam, while on Oconee Richland Creek is usually the clearest. Sinclair also has Georgia Power's Harlee Branch Power Plant -- a steam-powered electric generating plant -- that warms areas of the lake, keeping winter water temperatures near it well above those found on Oconee.

At Oconee's Wallace Dam, the power generators were specially designed to work as pumps, too. During the day water runs through them from Lake Oconee into Sinclair, producing electricity. At night some of the generators are reversed, pumping water back upstream into Oconee. This pumpback operation creates unusual current patterns on both lakes and affects the bass fishing.