“Anglers are catching more and more 20-plus-inch largemouth bass out of Cedar Creek Lake than they ever have,” Hickey said, noting that last spring produced several 6- to 7-pound bass. “This has been our goal from the beginning, and I hope this trend continues.”

Cedar Creek Lake, which impounds 748 acres and was constructed in 2002, was built to be a fishing lake. One of the major management goals on the lake is creating a dependable trophy bass fishery. Significant timber was left standing during construction, and fish attractors were sunk throughout the lake. In addition, special regulations were put into place to protect the bass and help shape the size structure as the lake developed. The daily bass limit on Cedar Creek Lake is one fish, with a minimum size of 20 inches. Shad may not be possessed or used as bait.

Cedar Creek Lake, which is naturally fertile because of an abundance of farmland in the creek’s watershed, is protected by a 250-foot buffer zone that goes all the way around the lake. This ensures complete public access and protects the lake from the effects of shoreline development. Bass forage in the lake, which is monitored along with the bass on a regular basis, includes shad, bluegills and crawfish.

Cedar Creek Lake is not an easy water to fish. The fish enjoy a great amount of well-defined structure to use at a variety of depths and tangles of timber where they can hide. That means they can be challenging to locate and to get out of their woody lairs. In addition, the word seems to have gotten around that Cedar Creek Lake’s bass keep getting bigger because fishing pressure is extensive for the lake’s small size.

Moving from relatively small waters to major reservoirs at the opposite ends of the size spectrum, two of the lakes that offer the best bass-fishing prospects for 2010 provide no great surprise. Kentucky and Barkley lakes both earned “excellent” ratings for largemouth bass in the most recent Fishing Forecast, and Hickey expects both to serve up excellent bass fishing this year.

Looking at the most recent report from tournament records, Kentucky and Barkley were the top two lakes in Kentucky in terms of the least tournament hours spent per bass weighing 4 pounds or more. These waters also lead the way for total number of 6-pound-plus bass brought to the scales and for the heaviest average winning bag. Both lakes were also among the top waterways in other categories, as well.

Good recent year-classes of largemouth bass, including an excellent year-class in 2007, will mean a profusion of bass in Kentucky Lake, but there are also large numbers of older, larger fish in this giant reservoir, where bass enjoy excellent growth rates.

Beyond offering outstanding fishing year in and year out, Kentucky Lake provides an abundance of opportunity to fishermen with more than 50,000 acres of water in Kentucky alone. Kentucky Lake anglers also enjoy a great variety of opportunities, which range from ledge fishing along the Tennessee River channel to flipping flooded buckbrush in the backs of the bays.

Although Barkley is not nearly as large overall as Kentucky Lake, most of its acreage is contained within the state’s borders, and its home-state portion therefore is close to comparable with Kentucky Lake’s at 41,775 acres. Barkley consistently earns a good or excellent rating in the annual Fishing Forecast and always offers a great combination of largemouth size and numbers. The current population includes excellent numbers of 15-inch-plus bass, with increasing numbers of 20-inch fish in the mix.

In addition to offering some of Kentucky’s finest largemouth bass fishing, both Kentucky Lake and Barkley Lake support smallmouth and spotted bass. Smallmouths especially serve up exciting opportunities early in the year. Much of the best early-season fishing for big smallmouth bass occurs in the far lower ends of the lakes and in the canal that links them. Anglers seeking early-season smallmouths often do well with suspending jerkbaits fished over rocky main-lake structure.