“But you’re wrong if you think that Pickwick Lake is the only place capable of producing one. That was probably true 10 years ago. Not anymore. They have moved down into Bay Springs Lake and even farther down the Tenn-Tom Waterway.”

Pugh said that Pickwick is the likeliest spot for the record to be broken in, but only because it gets the most fishing pressure from people looking for the smallmouth of a lifetime.

“Well, sure, it’s still the place to go for trophy smallies,” he conceded. “It’s so big and there are so many options, but not much of Pickwick is in Mississippi. We’ve got the Bear Creek, Indian Creek and Yellow Creek areas, and about 10 or 12 miles of shared bank with both Tennessee and Alabama.

“But what has been exciting is to follow the spread of smallmouths over the past decade down the Tenn-Tom Waterway.”

The Tenn-Tom, which starts at the Yellow Creek arm of Pickwick and runs through northeast Mississippi into western Alabama, eventually emptying into the Gulf of Mexico in Mobile.

“They haven’t moved that far down the waterway, but then there’s not a whole lot of it that is suitable smallmouth habitat,” Pugh added. “The canal section of the waterway itself, which connects Pickwick to the first pool, Bay Springs, has good quality smallmouths.

“Bay Springs, which is as deep and clear as Pickwick, has really become productive for smallies. You don’t catch as many in Bay Springs as you do in Pickwick, but the quality is so good. I wouldn’t be surprised if the first 8-pounder was caught there, but it’s still not my prediction.”

To get to Bay Springs from Pickwick, you go through the lock with the biggest difference in elevation of any in the country.

“The river section below the Bay Springs lock and dam is really starting to produce great smallies,” he also noted. “I’ve seen several 7s come from down there in recent years, and I really feel it could happen there. I kind of hate to say it because it is such a small fishery that it can’t take a lot of fishing pressure. But it could happen.”

As for the other, most popular black bass species, it is not likely that anyone will match Anthony Denny’s 18.15-pound record largemouth with another fish from Natchez State Park Lake, where he caught the fat sow on New Year’s Eve in 1992.

“I doubt that Natchez State Park has any fish left in there in that class,” said John Skains, the fisheries biologist for southwest Mississippi. “If you remember, the agency drained that 250-acre lake, renovated it and restocked it with Florida largemouth in the mid-1980s.

“That fish was probably, if not obviously, from the original Florida stocking in that lake that had survived long enough in the deep waters to get that big. You know the story on lakes like that. They go through a period of great growth in the first decade, hit a peak and begin to fade out.”

Natchez State Park is 10 or 15 years past its prime, but that’s not to say that it can’t produce trophy bass. Skains said it still gives up a few 10-pound-and-bigger fish each year. Great fish, yes, but not record-class.