The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s hatchery and Black Bass Program staff returned 18 healthy, double-digit largemouth bass to lakes across Arkansas in May, marking one of the final steps in the official inaugural year of the Arkansas Legacy Lunker Program
Eighteen largemouth weighing more than 10 pounds each are sitting in the newly renovated hatch house of the Joe Hogan State Fish Hatchery, thanks to anglers participating in the inaugural year of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Arkansas Legacy Lunker program
A bass angling friend told Rod Martinez late last week that the fish were biting really well at Lake Monticello, so he headed that way Saturday, anxious to see what he might land
It took a little longer than Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Fisheries biologists predicted, but DeGray Lake turned in its first entry into the Legacy Lunker books, quickly followed by its second
An Arkansas fisherman ignored some of the more well-known big bass lakes like Millwood and Monticello for his trip and set the hook into Arkansas’s first official Legacy Lunker bass, a 12.04 largemouth
Any angler who catches a largemouth bass weighing 10 pounds or larger from Arkansas waters from Jan. 1-March 31 can call the Lunker Line any time, day or night, and someone from the AGFC will meet them at the lake and take possession of the fish if it is healthy enough, return it to the AGFC’s Joe Hogan State Fish Hatchery in Lonoke and spawn it with genetically superior male bass to create improved fingerlings that will be stocked in the lake
