12.04-pound largemouth

[WB Staff]

WYNNE, Ark. (KAIT/Edited News Release) - Ask 100 anglers to name a “big bass” destination in Arkansas, and 85-acre Lake Austell within Village Creek State Park may never be mentioned. That is, unless you ask Kevin Riney, a bass angler from Jonesboro. Riney ignored some of the more well-known big bass lakes like Millwood and Monticello for his fishing trip last Saturday and set the hook into Arkansas’s first official Legacy Lunker bass, a 12.04-pound largemouth...


...In February 2012, an angler caught a 16-pound, 5-ounce bass in Lake Dunn, a 65-acre lake less than a mile from Lake Austell within Village Creek State Park. That fish would have stood as the new state record, toppling the current record of 16 pounds, 4 ounces, caught by Aaron Mardis from Mallard Lake in 1976. In a tragic turn of events, the angler who caught the fish did not have a current fishing license at the time of the catch, so it could not be recognized as a state record.

Oddly enough, the AGFC has no records of Florida largemouth bass, the species known for growing to trophy proportions, ever being stocked in Lake Dunn. The AGFC has stocked Florida bass in Austell, and records show retired Florida bass broodstock from the Andrew Hulsey State Fish Hatchery in Hot Springs placed in this lake in 1999 and 2006.

Read it all and watch the video at Channel 8 news:
https://www.kait8.com/2026/01/14/jonesb ... nker-bass/