The big Corps of Engineers lakes in northern Arkansas play host to swarms of summer anglers, leaving bass in smaller southern waters to grow bigger than their northern neighbors. Photo by John E. Phillips.

Because of hot weather, June can be challenging for bass fishermen in southern Arkansas, but it can also produce superb opportunities to catch monster largemouths.

While the big U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoirs in the mountain regions absorb most of the bass-fishing pressure, those lakes aren't known for producing largemouths bigger than 5 pounds. That's not to say you can't catch trophy largemouths up to and even exceeding 10 pounds in the big lakes.

You can, but huge fish are rare in sub-prime habitat that must support not only largemouths, but also spotted bass, smallmouth bass, white bass, striped bass, hybrid stripers, walleyes, saugeyes, crappie and even rainbow trout. Account for their intense tournament fishing pressure, and it's easy to see why lakes like Beaver, Greers Ferry, Ouachita and DeGray produce a lot of small to mid-range fish, but rarely any giants.

You'll find those in the flatlands of southern Arkansas, where small waters grow greater numbers of big largemouths. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission manages a handful of lakes in the Gulf Coastal Plain and Arkansas River Valley for trophy largemouths, giving anglers legitimate chances to catch bass exceeding 10 pounds.

At lakes like Columbia, Monticello and White Oak, you're disappointed if you don't catch a 7- to 8-pound largemouth, but you also know that every cast is capable of hooking a bass that might challenge the state record of 16 pounds, 4 ounces. That record has stood since 1976, but it's always at risk in the big-bass waters of south Arkansas.

The terrain, substrate and mineral composition of lakes in southern Arkansas are very similar to those in east Texas and northern and central Louisiana. The land is flat, with subtle topographic variances, so the lakes in this part of the state are shallow. The mineral content in the soil is also richer than in the mountains and their foothills to the north. That helps sustain healthy amounts of vegetation, which, in turn, help support healthy populations of invertebrates and shad. In other words, they're full of fish food.

Besides habitat and food, another major reason lakes in southern Arkansas produce bigger bass than the mountain lakes is because the AGFC stocks those lakes with Florida-strain largemouths. Since most of these lakes are impounded from small single creeks, they are relatively closed systems in which Florida-strain bass can thrive and flourish with relatively little competition from or interbreeding with northern-strain largemouths.

That keeps the gene pool relatively pure. Also, these lakes don't have any other major predators, like stripers and hybrids. Lack of competition for food allows bass to grow bigger.

Of course, you can always find big bass hotspots in surprising places, including places where Florida bass were never stocked and do not exist. The commonality in such waters is low fish density and low fishing pressure. You might not catch a lot of fish at such places, but any fish you do catch has a good chance of being huge.