Most of the big water in this pack is a river with a dam on it. Lake Sidney Lanier and Allatoona Lake sit close enough to Atlanta that a Saturday afternoon fills every cove within sight of a ramp. The Savannah chain runs three impoundments one below the other, Hartwell Lake, then Richard B Russell Lake, then J. Strom Thurmond Reservoir, and the Chattahoochee does the same thing with West Point Lake and Walter F George Reservoir. Under all of them the old river channel is still the deep line, the points are old ridges, and the flats were somebody's bottomland before the gates closed. The lake is also being held at a level, and that level is not what it was in June.
The pack carries 7,163 charted water bodies, which is eleventh of the 48 state lake packs by count. Of those, 2,668 carry a name, and that is eighth of the 48. Eighty five of the named ones cover more than a square kilometer, which is most of the water people hitch a trailer for. The water bodies themselves come from the National Hydrography Dataset, and the depth on them is built from state elevation surveys, so a reservoir opens as water with contours on it and a number under the boat.
That figure is the whole hydrography inside the pack box, so it takes in farm ponds, mill ponds, the borrow pit behind an old highway job and the pond behind a church. Eleventh of 48 by total count. Nobody launches a bass boat on most of them, and they are drawn anyway, which is the difference between a chart that matches the country you are driving through and one that goes blank between the big lakes.
The named count is the one you feel at the ramp. 2,668 named water bodies puts this pack eighth of the 48, and a name is what you type when somebody at the gas station tells you where they have been catching them. Eighty five of those named bodies run over a square kilometer.
Small water is charted as well as counted. A pond too small to have a name on it is still a shape with an edge, and the named ones sit in the same pack as Thurmond.
| Lake | Charted surface area |
|---|---|
| J. Strom Thurmond Reservoir | 170 km² (42,057 acres) |
| Lake Sidney Lanier | 154 km² (38,128 acres) |
| Walter F George Reservoir | 141 km² (34,743 acres) |
| Hartwell Lake | 135 km² (33,458 acres) |
| Weiss Lake | 103 km² (25,402 acres) |
| Richard B Russell Lake | 99 km² (24,488 acres) |
| West Point Lake | 90 km² (22,215 acres) |
| Lake Seminole | 71 km² (17,619 acres) |
| Lake Oconee | 70 km² (17,371 acres) |
| Lake Sinclair | 53 km² (13,121 acres) |
| Allatoona Lake | 45 km² (11,219 acres) |
| Lake Talquin | 33 km² (8,080 acres) |
The twelve largest named lakes the Georgia pack carries, by charted surface area, measured from the chart polygon itself. The pack carries 7,163 charted water bodies in all, 2,668 of them named, and 85 named lakes larger than one square kilometer.
There is no NOAA chart for a reservoir. Nautical charts stop where the navigable water stops, and nobody runs a hydrographic survey up the back of a creek arm on a Corps impoundment. Inland depth in Helm is built from state elevation surveys instead, and the water bodies come from the National Hydrography Dataset. That is the whole reason a lake arrives as water you can lay a route across against your draft rather than as a blue shape with a name floating in the middle of it.
A reservoir also sits at whatever level the dam is holding it at that week. Flood storage, power, and how the year has gone all move it, so the same contour is nearer the surface in one month than another. Read a contour on a lake as the shape of the basin rather than as a fixed distance under the keel, and carry the day's pool level in your head the way you carry the wind forecast.
The part that does not move is the old channel. On a drawn down lake the channel is still the channel and the shoulders on either side of it are what came up, and that is the moment a draft on the chart earns its keep. Enter it once, the water your boat cannot cross shades, and a line measured across a cove reports its shallowest point instead of an average.
The largest lake the pack carries is J. Strom Thurmond Reservoir at 170.2 square kilometers, 42,057 acres, measured from the chart polygon itself. Lake Sidney Lanier is next at 154.3 square kilometers, 38,128 acres. Ask at a ramp which of the two is bigger and you will get an argument, and the two are closer than the argument usually allows.
These are the largest named lakes in the pack, by the polygon area on the chart:
Weiss Lake at 25,402 acres and Richard B Russell Lake at 24,488 come out within about a thousand acres of one another, which surprises people who have only run one of them. Lake Seminole at 17,619 acres and Lake Oconee at 17,371 are closer still, a couple of hundred acres apart. Allatoona Lake, the water most Atlanta boats know best, is 11,219 acres, roughly a quarter of Thurmond. Chatuge Lake up in the mountains is 6,326 acres, about a seventh of it.
Lake Oconee and Lake Sinclair sit on the same river one below the other, 17,371 acres and 13,121 acres, and Lake Blackshear at 7,957 acres is smaller than either. Knowing that before you launch tells you how much of a day a lap of it is going to cost you.
The packs are cut to a box, not to a state line. That matters on this one more than on most, because a good share of the big water here has a line running through it. Weiss Lake at 25,402 acres, Nickajack Lake at 6,894, Chatuge Lake at 6,326, Lake Seminole at 17,619 and the whole Savannah chain all sit near a border, and a lake near a border comes down with this pack and with the neighboring one. You do not lose the far bank because you downloaded the wrong box.
The box reaches past the line in the other direction too. Lake Talquin at 8,080 acres, Lake Iamonia at 5,313 and Lake Miccosukee at 4,992 are carried here along with the rest, so a run down toward the Florida line does not need a second download to be charted.
There are packs for the neighboring water as well, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina, and they overlap this one at the edges for the same reason. If you fish Chatuge in July and Weiss in the spring, two packs on the phone cover both ends of the year without a seam where the state line falls.
Inland lake depth comes from state elevation surveys rather than from nautical charts, and a reservoir sits at whatever level it is being held at that week. Treat the shape and the depth as a guide, keep a lookout, and verify locally.
Yes. Lake Sidney Lanier is in the Georgia pack at 154.3 square kilometers, 38,128 acres, with contours and depth built from state elevation surveys and read against the draft you enter. Allatoona Lake, 11,219 acres, is in the same pack, and so is West Point Lake at 22,215.
J. Strom Thurmond Reservoir, 170.2 square kilometers or 42,057 acres, measured from the chart polygon itself. Lake Sidney Lanier follows at 38,128 acres, then Walter F George Reservoir at 34,743 and Hartwell Lake at 33,458. Eighty five named lakes in the pack run over a square kilometer.
Yes. The packs are cut to a box rather than to a state line, so Weiss Lake, all 25,402 acres of it, comes down with this pack as well as with the Alabama one. The same goes for Nickajack Lake at 6,894 acres and Chatuge Lake at 6,326, which sit near lines of their own.
Helm Boating