Monticello Reservoir

Overview

Lake Monticello is in Fairfield County off Highway 215 near Jenkinsville, beside the Broad River, roughly a 35 minute drive from downtown Columbia. It opened in 1978 as a pumped storage reservoir that also cools a nuclear reactor, and it works together with the older Parr Reservoir. A separate 300 acre recreational lake was built next to it for public use. Because water is pumped up and released through turbines, the level can rise and fall by about 5 feet, so boaters need to stay alert. Monticello has tighter limits on boating than nearby lakes, with no water skiing or jet skis allowed, and a strip of land around the whole lake is kept natural. The lake covers about 6,700 acres, and a 7.2 mile stretch of shoreline inside the nuclear exclusion zone is closed to the public. The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources lists blue, channel and white catfish and yellow and flat bullheads among the popular fish, along with largemouth bass, black and white crappie, white bass, bluegill, redear and redbreast.

Regulations

A largemouth bass minimum length limit applies on Lake Monticello. Part of the shoreline is inside a nuclear exclusion zone and is not open to the public. See the South Carolina rules for Lake Monticello: https://www.dnr.sc.gov/lakes/monticello/regs.html

Nearby waters

• Lake Murray · 29.7 km (SC)
• Fishing Creek Reservoir · 50 km (SC)