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Bass Fishing Central Alabama Contents Demopolis Logan Martin Lake Martin Millers Ferry

Millers Ferry Reservoir

History

The town of Camden, Alabama, incorporated in 1832, lies today near Millers Ferry. Camden was named by an early settler in honor of his hometown of Camden, South Carolina. In the courthouse square of Camden is a plaque honoring Private Enoch H. Cook who, with ten sons and two grandsons, served in the Confederate Army--possibly the largest number of soldiers furnished by one family. Of the 13, five were killed in action.

Lake Characteristics

This large impoundment has no thermocline depth and a growing season of 230 to 245 frost-free days a year. The shoreline distance is 516 miles and the drainage area is 20,700 square miles. The lake has a mean depth of 19.3 feet and a maximum depth of 60 feet. Millers Ferry is located in the extreme southern central part of the state south of Selma, Alabama.

This lake has been abundantly stocked with striped, hybrid striped and Florida largemouth bass species. In 1986, a total of 38,000 Florida largemouth bass fingerlings, 1 to 2 inches in length, were stocked throughout the reservoir. This stocking was followed in 1987 with another distribution of the fingerlings, totaling 16,000. The last stocking to this date occured in 1990 with a total of 27,760 Florida largemouth bass distributed throughout Millers Ferry. This brings the total amount of stocked largemouth bass in this lake to 81,760 fish.

In the electrofishing surveys, approximately 75 largemouth were caught per hour. The surveys regularly do not sample spotted bass because the studies generally stay within the creeks and embayment areas. However, in the gill netting survey, two spotted bass were caught in a total of 10 hours of effort.

The average growth of largemouth bass in this reservoir is 1.3 inches per year. An age-1 largemouth will grow from an average 4.09 inches to approximately 5.6 inches in one year. In this sample, the largemouth growth peaked at age 5 when the average bass was slightly over 15 inches long.