When the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) closed the valve on Cedar Creek Lake in Lincoln County in September 2002, they had to know that the $4.2 million they had just invested in creating the state’s first and only true trophy bass lake was going to return huge dividends to the local economy. After all, anglers are going to want to fish this lake — a lot.

Even more than that, they also knew anglers were going to eventually find this 784-acre reservoir a unique setting, unlike anywhere else in the Commonwealth for catching fish, bass especially. In fact, anglers are already scoring well, reporting catches of a lot of undersized bass. It sounds a little strange to say it, but yes, some 15-inch and bigger largemouth are being hooked now. A 15-inch bass on almost any other lake wouldn’t be called “undersized,” but things are a little different on Cedar Creek. A bass of 20 inches is the minimum size limit here, which is more restrictive than on any other water in Kentucky. Here’s why.

This lake isn’t being managed like an average bass fishery might be elsewhere. The KDFWR is hoping for “gold” in this event, and from the first day of preparation, the goal has always been different. So far this contender seems to be doing well. It’s just a matter of a time before the “trophy” catching aspect for bass anglers should kick in, and then perhaps Cedar Creek will stand as the best big bass lake in Kentucky.

When the opportunity to construct a new lake arose, KDFWR fisheries biologists already had a vision in mind, one that would help fulfill a bass angler’s dreams of what a quality fishing environment and experience would be.

Imagine it. No personal watercraft. No jet-driven pleasure boats. No skiing or houseboats. Just pure, unadulterated fishing territory wherever you go. Talk about a unique and desirable approach to creating what most of us would consider as angling utopia! It’s unheard of. While all the other waterways in the Commonwealth also offer pleasure boaters a place to do their thing, this one spot goes to serve anglers’ wants as its primary recreational function. But there’s more.

To top it all off, the agency took the rare advantage of being able to control the development of the various fisheries of a water body from the get-go, and decided to go with trophy largemouth management. It was tried a time or two here and there in past years, in a small state-owned lake, but without much success.

Attempting to take an existing fishery and mold it into a trophy one is very difficult. Many dynamics are already set within an existing lake’s environment that can limit the kind of production it takes to generate and sustain a trophy-class bass fishery. It’s often harder to mold a fishery, if you have to try to come up with a combination of management plans (regulations) after the fish populations are already established.

Having control of more of the aspects of developing a fishery (except nature) from day one increases the chance that a trophy approach will work; Cedar Creek has been designed both in physical development and regulation to give it the best chance it can have to produce monster bucketmouths. How good it can become depends on many, many factors — and time holds the answer.

There’s not much any other way to describe what the KDFWR, with the help of several volunteers and county officials, did in creating fish habitat in Cedar Creek, than to say they just went nuts. Before the water began filling the lake, an unbelievable amount of manmade habitat was placed in the lake to supplement a tremendous quantity of natural cover the agency instructed the lake contractors to leave in the basin.

Numerous areas of the lake have been artificially enhanced not only for fishing cover, but also with spawning and feeding in mind. Biologists have tried to think of every facet of what maintains and supports the bass (and other species) fishery to ensure the needs of the fish to grow and multiply would be met.