The Best Lakes for Trophy Bass in Each Southern State

Florida and Texas rank among the top producers of giant largemouths, but every Southern state boasts outstanding waterbodies inhabited by bass of impressive proportions. Here are some of the best trophy waters in the region to get you started on your quest for the bass of a lifetime.

Giant Bass Hotspots in the Southern U.S.

Alabama

Lake Eufaula on the Georgia line and Lake Guntersville on the Tennessee River are tops in the Yellowhammer State. Despite the popularity of 69,000-acre Guntersville, which gets heavy fishing pressure, the lake has been producing lots of bass weighing 8 pounds or better, as well as prodigious numbers of 3- to 5-pounders.

Arkansas

Millwood Lake, a 33,000-acre impoundment north of Texarkana, has had lots of Florida-strain largemouth stockings that are now paying off with lunkers.

Florida

Fellsmere and Kenansville, a pair of connected, marshy impoundments west of Vero Beach, have been hot in recent years. And Orange Lake, a 12,550-acre impoundment near Gainesville that occasionally goes almost dry then refills, repeatedly recreating the new-lake phenomenon, is practically a sure bet if you don’t mind live-baiting with big, wild shiners.

Georgia

Walter F. George, a Chattahoochee River impoundment on the Alabama line (aka Lake Eufaula in ‘Bama), is the state’s top trophy bass producer, with Lake Seminole on the Florida border as a close second.

Louisiana

At 5,000 acres, Caney Lake is relatively small, yet it has been producing impressive lunkers in recent years. Toledo Bend, a much larger reservoir shared with Texas, is benefitting from a low-water period in 2019. Fish that spawned then are now 6 years old and many are hitting their prime size.

• Related: Proven Ways to Zero in on Giant Largemouth Bass in the South

Mississippi

The state’s top lunker lake is 33,000-acre Ross Barnett on the Pearl River. According to locals, many of the biggest fish come from north of the Route 43 bridge, and fishing the causeway openings after big rains or when the water is falling can also be productive.

North Carolina

West of Raleigh, Jordan Lake’s 14,000 acres fed by the Haw River produce plenty of of lunkers on willow flats and stump fields from pre-spawn through early July. Buzzbaits, spinnerbaits and shallow-running crankbaits have accounted for quite a few.

South Carolina

Connected lakes Marion and Moultrie, known collectively as the Santee-Cooper lakes, are enormous and currently cranking out giant largemouths at a nearly unprecedented rate.

Tennessee

Chickamauga produced the state-record bass, a giant weighing 15 pounds 3 ounces, and its vast hydrilla flats are loaded with Florida-strain fish. Pickwick also produces some monsters, and locals recommend fishing the fast water below the dam or the mid-river shell bars.

Texas

Lake Fork, east of Dallas, may be the best double-digit-weight bass lake in the entire country. But Texas has other big-fish options. One is O.H. Ivie, where Texas Parks & Wildlife reports about 80 percent of the genetics are from Florida-strain bass. After a drought and refill in 2018 and 2019, it’s now producing a bumper crop of fast-growing fish, including many weighing more than 13 pounds.

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• This article was featured in the September issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe.

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