Photo By Jeff Christopher

The 1 million resident and non-resident anglers who fish Arkansas waters this spring should have no trouble finding abundant largemouth bass, including some real whoppers.

"The Arkansas largemouth bass population remains relatively robust and stable," said Colton Dennis, coordinator of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's black-bass program. "Fishing conditions should stay about the same or slightly improve in the state. In 2003, a person needed to fish 1,052 hours to catch a 5-pound or larger bass. In 2005, that number dropped to 487 hours."

Many biologists credit stockings of Florida bass in several Arkansas lakes for increasing the amount of big bass. Because Florida bass cannot tolerate extremely cold temperatures, most stockings occur in the southern half of Arkansas. Consequently, the lakes in the southern part of the state typically produce the most and largest bass each year.

"We've stocked more than 1.2 million black bass each year since 2002 into approximately 40 different water bodies throughout the state," Dennis said. "Some of those waters include Chicot, Columbia, Monticello, Millwood, Lower White Oak, Atkins, Bois d'Arc, DeGray, Erling, Gurdon, Mercer Bayou and Greenlee. We will continue introducing Florida largemouth bass into the Brushy Creek arm of Lake DeGray to evaluate the effectiveness of this stocking technique in an effort to establish Florida genes into the bass population."

With good populations of Florida bass, Lake Monticello, a 1,520-acre impoundment near the town of Monticello, continues to produce outstanding catches, with plenty of largemouths in the 5- to 10-pound range and some bigger ones. State biologists began an age and growth study of largemouth bass to determine if the reservoir needs any regulation changes. Currently anglers may keep four bass per day, but only one of those fish may exceed 21 inches in length; every fish between 16 and 21 inches must be released.

"We have no regulation changes planned for 2007, but we are studying to see if we need to make any changes," said Jeremy Risley, an AGFC fisheries biologist in Monticello. "Lake Monticello is probably the hottest lake in Arkansas for producing big bass. It's also a good numbers lake. There are plenty of slot fish in the 3- to 7-pound range that people must release."