MONTICELLO — The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is hedging its bets with bringing trophy-class bass fishing back to Lake Monticello with today’s release of roughly 9,000 special fish.These fish are the first segment of a stocking totaling 22,000 Florida largemouth bass from Red Hills Fishery in Georgia that are the offspring of fish that have all the genetic makings of trophy-class bass.The fingerlings, dubbed TITAN MAXX™ bass by the Red Hills facility, were spawned from bass that were genetically tested and have specific genetic markers of fish that exhibit trophy-class growth potential. “The AGFC has been stocking Florida bass for decades, which have had the potential to become trophies, but now we’re able to select the Floridas that have the most potential from that pool,” Jeremy Risley, AGFC Black Bass Program coordinator, said. “It’s sort of like we’re switching from stocking college basketball players who are already great athletes to only stocking the elite NBA players of the fish world.”According to Risley, Lake Monticello’s renovation offered the perfect opportunity to infuse the system with these “thoroughbred” bass.“When we stock Florida bass, it’s all about getting the genetics of big fish into the system,” Risley said. “We’re not necessarily adding more fish in most established fisheries because the fish we stock essentially outcompete and take the place of a fish that was already there. With Monticello’s renovation, we’re able to work with a cleaner slate and have a larger percentage of Florida and TITAN MAXX genetics from the beginning.”Josh Sakmar, director of Biology and Infrastructure at Red Hills, stressed that the fish are not genetically engineered or modified, but are naturally occurring bass bloodlines found in the wild.“All of the broodstock we used came out of the wild in the state of Florida, and all the broodstock were tested according to the state ...
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