Because of its small size, however, Gilliland said that Cedar Lake is very vulnerable to over-harvest. A heavy influx of skillful anglers could clean it quickly.

“Cedar Lake is another one that jumps out,” Gilliland said. “Its electrofishing surveys looked really good. It has big fish, and we got quite a few reports of 10-pound bass being caught off beds. It was drawn down years ago and restocked with Florida bass. Ten years later, it’s cranking out some nice fish.

“That’s a tricky deal there,” he added. “It’s such a small lake, with clear water, it could be over-exploited fairly easily.”

Crooked Branch
Another small lake, Crooked Branch, had electrofishing results similar to those at Bell Cow. It produced 29 bass per hour, of which 12 (41 percent) were longer than 14 inches. The biggest bass in the sample weighed 8 pounds.

NORTHEAST
Lakes Hudson & Onapa
In the Ozark Plateau, the ODWC sampled only two lakes larger than 1,000 acres, Hudson and Onapa. Lake Hudson’s electrofishing data looked decent, producing 106 fish per hour, of which 41 (39 percent) exceeded 14 inches. The biggest bass in that sample weighed 7.8 pounds.

Lake Onapa, in comparison, produced 73 bass per hour, of which 17 (23 percent) exceeded 14 inches. The largest weighed 10 pounds.

SMALL LAKES
Of lakes smaller than 1,000 acres, Lake Greenleaf, near Muskogee, was one of the best. It produced 82 bass per hour last spring, of which 36 were larger than 14 inches. The biggest bass in that sample was 7.3 pounds.

Good candidates for a fish fry run are lakes Westville and Stigler, which have tons of bass, but very few big ones. Last spring, for example, Vian City Lake produced 181 bass per hour, of which only 13 (7 percent) exceeded 14 inches. The largest weighed 5.7 pounds.

The ODWC’s Gene Gilliland said that it’s imperative for anglers to keep and eat little bass. And not just a few here and there, but a lot, and often.

Westville Lake produced 132 bass per hour, of which 34 (26 percent) exceeded 14 inches. That’s not too bad, really, until you notice that the biggest bass in the sample weighed only 4 pounds. That might indicate an overabundance of big bass.

Or, how about Stigler City Lake? It produced 80 bass per hour, which isn’t great, but only one of those was longer than 14 inches, and it weighed 1.2 pounds.