Talk with serious striped bass anglers in Georgia about the best locations for catching both numbers of striped bass as well as a trophy, and Clarks Hill will always make the short list. The third impoundment of the Savannah River, Clarks Hill is Georgia's largest reservoir at 71,535 acres. The lake has been stocked with stripers for better than 30 years, enough time for some true monsters to take up residence.

Mark Crawford of Team Save One More Guide Service shows off a big cold-weather striper from Clarks Hill. Photo courtesy of Mark Crawford.

Clarks Hill's fertile waters also support a load of forage that sustains larger numbers of striped bass. With details like these, it is no wonder the "Hill" is a hot spot for wintertime.

BIG FISH ON
! Water temperature plays a big part in where and how striped bass guide Mike Maddalena fishes Clarks Hill in the winter. "Mike Madd" (as he's known on the water) is a partner in Big Fish On! Guide Service and is the seven-time Angler of the Year for the North Georgia Striper Club. His most productive wintertime big striped bass tactic is to slow-troll or freeline big live baits.

"I'll pull something big like a gizzard shad or a rainbow trout that's 12 inches long or bigger," said the guide. "Especially if there's been a warming trend at some point, or if we have a mild winter."

When looking for striped bass, Maddalena slow-trolls as many as eight baits behind his 24-foot Carolina Skiff guide boat. Using a powerful trolling motor, he systematically arranges baits behind his boat using planer boards to pull the baited lines out to the sides of his boat and keep them from tangling. Using trout that many anglers would consider big enough to take home on a stringer, he rigs the rainbows on 7/0 or 8/0 Gamakatsu octopus hooks. Just be aware that you must purchase the trout from a bait shop and have a receipt to be legal.

For large gizzard shad, he uses a slightly smaller 6/0 hook, but adds a "stinger" treble hook attached to an 8-inch piece of 40-pound-test monofilament line hooked into the bait's tail section.

"The trout are pretty slimy," Maddalena explained, "and stripers don't have much trouble swallowing them, but they will mouth a gizzard for a while and that's where the stinger helps hook the fish. Of course, a trophy fish that's better than 20 pounds can swallow either one without batting an eye. The first warning you get of that is a rod screaming with line peeling off the reel."

Maddalena looks for January striped bass on Clarks Hill to move back into one of the many tributary creeks that feed the lake. His favorite spots for trophy stripers include Fishing Creek and Soap Creek, both midlake locations near Lincolnton, and Buffalo Creek, off of Little River on the South Carolina side. One of the first places he checks is from midway in Soap Creek all the way back to where the water necks down to less than 10 feet wide. Stripers move up along the banks of Soap Creek and look for places to ambush prey. This tributary draws a lot of shad and blueback herring in the winter; stripers follow them in.

"I'll look for bait first," said "Mike Madd," "both on my graph and on the surface of the water. Bait will hold out in the creek, but some times the gizzards will be too shallow to mark. If I see the tell tale signs of bait flipping up in a small cut or right up on the bank, I know there's likely to be stripers in there."