Photo by Ron Sinfelt.

Fishermen in Arkansas are so impatient to catch Florida-strain largemouth bass -- which grow faster, live longer and outweigh our native fish -- that they can't even wait for them to grow up, according to Colton Dennis, the biologist in charge of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's statewide black bass program.

"Just last week an angler e-mailed me and said, 'Hey, we're gonna have a tournament on DeGray next summer and heard y'all stocked Florida bass there,'" Dennis recalled. "The inquisitive fisherman wrote, 'I'd like to bring some back for the tournament weigh-in. What arm of the lake did you stock?'"

Telling the story with a good-natured chuckle, Dennis said that his reply confirmed that the Brushy Creek arm of DeGray does contain a healthy population of Florida bass, but the fish were just fingerlings when they'd been stocked only seven months earlier.

"On DeGray, it takes two years for these fish to even reach 13 inches," Dennis said, but he appreciated the impatient fisherman's enthusiasm for catching big bass.

Because interest in bass fishing is at an all-time high, we asked Dennis for a status report on the AGFC's Florida bass program and a peek into its future. He also explained what the program can and cannot accomplish and gave us a roll call of lakes where you might tangle with a fish that carries those most-wanted genes from the Sunshine State.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?
In the 1930s, scientists identified the robust fish that evolved in peninsular Florida as a subspecies of the black bass family. Since then, Florida-strain bass have become an important part of stocking programs throughout the Gulf Coast states, southeastern U.S. and as far west as California.

The attraction is simple. When they're stocked appropriately, Florida bass "have the ability to grow larger and to also live longer," Dennis said. "And the anglers want them. The No. 1 sportfish in Arkansas is the largemouth bass, and that's what our anglers are targeting."

Big bass also mean big business, with anglers spending hundreds of millions per year to catch Arkansas bass.

"These days, a lot of our anglers travel to Oklahoma or Texas to catch trophy-sized fish," Dennis said. "But there are places to go in Arkansas to catch them, too, and that's what we're trying to provide with our Florida bass program."

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
In 2002, the AGFC released its second comprehensiveLargemouth Bass Management Plan. It states that "past stocking of Florida-strain largemouth bass . . . has been in large part without guidelines on stocking suitability or follow-up studies to determine survival and impacts on the fishery."

However, the new plan, combined with a larger staff armed with modern training, equipment and facilities has the agency poised for a more effective approach now.