Darren Nunley caught a 15.75-pound largemouth bass on Tennessee's Nickajack Lake using a Z-Man chatterbait with a Hog Farmer Spunk Shad trailer, fishing through hydrilla grass at 8:30 a.m. The Florida-strain bass should become Tennessee's new state record, pending DNA testing confirmation.
A Tennessee angler is celebrating today after catching what should soon be confirmed as the state's biggest-ever largemouth bass. Darren Nunley caught the 15-plus pound lunker on Nickajack Lake on Saturday, February 28 while fishing with guide and long-time friend Hensley Powell.
Nunley was fishing a chatterbait through hydrilla grass at about 8:30 a.m. when the bass hit, Hensley tells F&S. "I caught an 8-pounder on the same hydrilla flat the day before," the guide and former professional angler recalls. "The bigger fish are starting to move into these flats in preparation for the spawn, so I knew Darren had a good chance at a nice fish."
Nunley, a resident of Whitwell, Tennessee, says he's been fishing Nickajack his whole life. "The fish never jumped during the fight. I think he was too big to jump," he tells F&S. "He felt like dead weight at first. I thought I was hung up in the hydrilla. "
Nunley brought the fish to the boat quickly after that. "It swam in circles a couple times and Darren just pulled it right into the net," Hensley recalls. "He looked at me and said, 'That's the biggest fish I've ever caught.' I told him it was going to be a new state record."
The fish weighed 15.8 pounds on Powell's boat scale. "My scale's never been stretched that far," he says. "We put it in the live well and went straight in to get it certified."
Back at the boat ramp, Powell and Hensley met Tennessee Game Warden Shawn Edgemon who directed them to a nearby grocery store with a certified scale. After drying the fish off repeatedly, it still weighed in at a whopping 15.75 pounds—a half-pound heavier than the standing state record, which was caught in 2015 on nearby Lake Chickamauga.
Nunley spent the morning of Monday, March 2 with Tennessee Wildlife Resource Association biologists, he says, who weighed and measured the fish again. "It still came in at 15.75 on their scales," he says. "The length was 27 1/4 inches, and the girth was 22 and 1/2. It won't be officially certified as the new state record for at least two weeks. They have to send it off for DNA testing."
Nunley was trailing his Z-Man chatterbait with a Hog Farmer Spunk Shad when the fish hit. According to Hensley, the bass that Nunley caught was a Florida-strain largemouth. He says TWRA began stocking Florida strain bass in Nickajack Lake back in 2015. "I've always said that the next state-record was going to come out Nickajack," Hensley says. "I just never thought it would be caught on my boat."
This record catch illustrates how successful fisheries management can pay off decades later. Tennessee’s decision to stock Florida-strain largemouth bass in Nickajack Lake starting in 2015 created the genetic foundation for trophy-class fish. The timing and location were classic pre-spawn bass behavior—big females moving onto hydrilla flats in late February. For serious bass anglers, this reinforces that persistence on familiar water, combined with understanding seasonal patterns, often produces career fish. The chatterbait presentation through heavy cover proved effective when lighter lures might have been overpowered by the aggressive strike of a fish this size.
THE 1871 CLUB
