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South Arkansas is the Place for Big Bass and Plenty of Angling Action
Submitted by: TBC Press
Posted on: 03/18/20
News # 13396
If you’re looking for big bass and plenty of good angling action, look to South Arkansas.
According to the recently released 2019 Arkansas Tournament Information Program Annual Report, south Arkansas lakes such as Lake Columbia, Lake Erling and Millwood Lake had the best overall rankings among Arkansas bass tournament results last year.
The report is compiled each year using voluntary data supplied by bass fishing clubs and tournament organizations throughout the state. Last year, 70 organizations gave information on 310 tournaments covering 30 bodies of water in The Natural State.
Lake Columbia, the water-supply reservoir for Magnolia, Arkansas, held the top spot among the 17 tournament locations with at least five reports.
Columbia also sits at the no. 1 spot in rankings from the last five years. In fact, it swept all categories of fishing quality indicators (percent of anglers who caught a fish, average weight of fish weighed, number of fish weighed per day, pounds of bass weighed per angler per day, and least number of hours to catch a fish larger than 5 pounds).
Lake Erling, just a short drive from Columbia, took the second place spot overall. This is the second year in a row that Columbia and Erling were ranked first and second in the report. Chicot, Millwood and Pool 2 of the Arkansas River near Dumas round out the top five ranked fisheries in the report, all of which lie south of I-40.
The prominence of southern reservoirs wasn’t a surprise to Buckingham.
“Southern Arkansas lakes have a longer growing season, meet more conditions to have successful Florida largemouth bass stocking programs and tend to see better growth on average,” Buckingham said. “This isn’t really news to avid anglers who travel around the state, but it is worth talking about when anglers are looking to visit a new lake or tournament directors are looking to change things up and go somewhere different than they typically do.”
Even though southern lakes had the best overall results, Lake Ouachita and DeGray Lake, two clear-water reservoirs not really as well known for producing trophy-class fish, dominated the largest fish weighed by ATIP tournaments last year. Ouachita produced four of the top 10 big fish of the tournament year, while DeGray produced three of the top 10, including the largest of the year, a 10-pound giant caught last February.
“That’s not a huge surprise,” Buckingham said. “We began stocking Florida largemouth bass in DeGray and Ouachita in 2007, and with previous stocking efforts in Arkansas and other states, it typically takes about 10 years to start seeing bass in that elite trophy class after Florida largemouth bass stockings.”
For more information on the AGFC’s Black Bass Program and complete ATIP reports for the last seven years, visit www.agfc.com/en/fishing/sportfish/black-bass.
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