POLLARD'S CORNER --- At the Jet food store, lake-bound patrons snapped up crickets and minnows by the dozen Saturday and waited in long lines for the day's most coveted commodity: ice.

"There's lots more people up here than last year," said Wanda Murdock, of Hephzibah, who ventured from her campsite at nearby Wildwood Park to stock up on a few essentials at the country store at Pollard's Corner.

From the gas pumps to the ice house to the live bait wells, the crowds were in stark contrast to last year, when lower lake levels lured far fewer visitors to Thurmond Lake and its network of seasonally dependent merchants.

During the July Fourth weekend of 2008, when water levels were 7.5 feet lower than they were Saturday, visitation numbers were down 20 percent from 2007, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

This year, with the lake closer to full, many patrons were planning well ahead.

"We got our campsite reservation way back in February," Mrs. Murdock said. She said the family usually spends a week at the lake each July.

Inside the store, cash registers busily rang up purchases.

"We're open from 5 a.m. until 10 p.m.," said Jeannette Brown, one of the store's managers. "In the morning, the fishermen are the first ones through here, and then we get all the rest of them the rest of the day."

The store at Washington and Scott's Ferry roads has been a landmark for more than 40 years.

It was acquired by Jet Foods in August 2007 but has changed little.

"We've stopped in up here since I was a kid," Donnie Williams said. "It's always Pollards Corner Store to me."