Lake Management in Franklin, Tennessee: The Truth about Florida Bass
Whether you have a lake or pond in Franklin just for fun fishing every now and then with your family and friends, or you want to grow state-record-sized fish, you probably like to fish because it brings you peace and enjoyment like few other pastimes can. And that’s what fishing should be! But just like anything else in life, attention to detail can make the difference between achieving your goal and not coming close to it, whether your goal is lofty or modest. Even modest goals can be missed with bad process.
And part of bad process is working off bad information. In an ideal world, every private fish hatchery and every lake management company seeking to work on your Franklin lake would be honest and have the utmost integrity, always putting the good of their customers’ water above their own profit margin; unfortunately, that no more happens in this industry than it does in any other. I make a lot of blog posts about integrity simply because it can make or break your pond; along those same lines, having the right information or not having it can mean the difference between a pretty good pond, and the pond you dreamed of when you bought it or had it built.
I regularly talk to new customers who tell me that this or that one of my competitors told them that Florida bass won’t survive in Tennessee, or that they won’t grow here, or some other doomsday report based on our latitude. If my business was located in Michigan, I would never stock a Florida bass; but pure Florida bass have been stocked into Lake Chickamauga since 2000 by TWRA, and in 2015 a new state-record largemouth weighing fifteen pounds two ounces was caught from the lake. Ten-pound largemouth have become common in that lake; but they weren’t before Florida bass were stocked. TWRA’s Florida bass program has been so successful that they have expanded it to several other lakes, both large reservoirs and smaller public lakes, across the state.
I made another post recently about a four-acre pond barely an hour from the Kentucky border that we stocked with one- to two-pound pure Florida bass in 2018, followed by 6-8” Florida bass in 2019; from the first week of March through the end of April 2022, close to a dozen bass in the six- to ten-pound range were caught from that little four-acre pond, but not weighed; then the first week of September 2022, a nine-pounder was caught and weighed.
Now I’ll tell you about another pond with nothing but pure Floridas for its bass - but this pond is further north. It’s a three-acre pond in southern Kentucky, almost two hours north of Franklin; it was stocked with forage fish in July 2020, and with pure Florida bass fingerlings in April 2022.
The bass were 2-3” long when they were stocked. So of course since Florida bass won’t grow well even in Tennessee, these bass could be expected to still be pretty puny when we electrofished the pond a little over three years later, on July 1, 2025. Those pure Floridas have to just be shivering all the time and constantly stressed in that mean old Kentucky pond so far from their native range...or so our competitors and some folks on forums would tell you.
Here’s one of those poor mistreated Florida bass, electrofished on July 1, 2025:
Here’s another one that weighed 4.2 pounds:
This poor bass was only 3.7 pounds:
In Kentucky. In a pond that has had minimal management in the three years since the bass were stocked. The landowner is excited now that he sees how big those Floridas are getting just on genetics, and he’s going to start stocking more forage and more frequently. This pond will have ten-pound bass in two years.
In Kentucky. Five years from stocking the bass at 2-3”. Count on it.
In lake and pond management, as in any realm in life, details make the difference; and having accurate information that will allow you to choose the right details will make the difference in having the pond of your dreams, or not.
