Georgia · Catfish (channel and flathead)
Can you keep a catfish (channel and flathead) in Georgia?
Yes, with limits
Statewide
Open year-roundSize
No size limit stated
total length
Daily bag
—
per person per day
No daily limit and no minimum length. Channel and flathead catfish are also the only game fish excepted from Georgia’s overall 50-fish possession cap.
What we left out on purpose
- Georgia’s own site refused every automated request at retrieval — georgiawildlife.com answered 403 to scripts, including for its regulations PDF. The figures here come from the eRegulations edition that Georgia WRD publishes its guide through, read as raw page text rather than as a summary.
- A summarised source stated a 14-inch statewide minimum for largemouth bass. The regulation text says 12 inches statewide with named exceptions at 14 — and Lake Allatoona and Lake Hartwell are not among them. Publishing 14 across the board would have been wrong at half of this site’s Georgia waters.
- The 15-fish limit for striped bass, white bass and hybrids is a shared limit across all three, and the black bass limit of 10 is shared across largemouth, spotted, shoal and redeye. The registry records limits per species, so those numbers are the shared pool rather than a per-species allowance. Each note says so.
- The striped bass rule "only two fish of the total limit 22 inches or longer" is a cap on large fish, not a minimum size. It has no field in this schema and is carried in the note.
- Lake Hartwell straddles Georgia and South Carolina, and Georgia’s striped bass entry points to an agreement with South Carolina whose terms were not read. Anglers on the state line should check both sets of rules — South Carolina’s are on this site as well.
- Georgia also sets special rules for Lake Blue Ridge, Burton, Juliette, Blackshear, Oconee, Walter F. George, Lindsay Grace, Seminole and the Public Fishing Area lakes. None of those waters is reported on by this site, so none is carried here.
- The overall cap of 50 game fish in possession, channel and flathead catfish excepted, applies across every species listed. It has no per-species field and appears in the notes where it bites hardest.
Other species in Georgia
Where to try today
- Lake Allatoona 6/10 · Decent
- Lake Hartwell 6/10 · Decent
- Lake Lanier 6/10 · Decent
- West Point Lake 6/10 · Decent