DEARING, Ga. (WJBF) – The McDuffie Public Fishing Area is a special place where people from around the community can come out, and enjoy a day on the water.
For this episode of “Your Hometown Road Trip” we went out and spoke with the Area Facilities Manager, Chalisa Fabillar about some of the things to do, and why the McDuffie Public Fishing Area is so special.
Tell us a little bit about the McDuffie Fishing Area.
We’re out in McDuffie County, as the name says, and we’re in Dearing, actually on the outskirts of Dearing, and as the name says, we’re a public fishing area. We’ve got seven lakes for the public to fish, plus a couple the beavers have made for the public, and we also have a hatchery here on site for warm-water fish species during this time of year.
How important is the work that you do out here?
It’s very important if you want these waters to be productive over a long period of time. These are man-made lakes, so they didn’t evolve to have natural populations and besides that, even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to sustain the kind of output that our fishermen expect here over time. So, we do have to supplement the food source for the small fish that the big fish eat, and then we also just have to supplement the natural populations overall, to make sure that we have fish for the public to catch.
How Important is this area to the community?
When we talk about the community, obviously there’s the people that pass through Dearing and they stop at the gas stations, and they put their money in, but, for me, I think one of the biggest things is, and I get pretty sensitive about this, too, we have Fort Gordon close by. We get a lot of soldiers out here, especially soldiers with PTSD, and places like this, where they can have some peace and quiet, they’re incredibly important for their healing and for their overall just their overall mental well-being in having a place where they can decompress.
