Having giant bass in your pond has a lot more to do with your food supply than your genetics. It is true that Florida bass will get larger than Northern bass, but no bass will attain any size worth bragging about unless it has plenty to eat.
If you develop a kick ass food chain you will have big, fat, healthy bass no matter what strain you are able to stock.
I can show you ponds here in New Jersey that are full of fat two, three, four, five, and six pound bass and I can show you ponds in Florida that are choked with one pound bass and not much else.
Chances are that you won't see many ten plus pound bass in an Illinois pond, but could you be happy spending an afternoon reeling in three and four pound bass one after another?
Like me, you are geographically limited. It sucks, and I am jealous of all you guys that have truly wicked populations of ten plus pound fish, but I will never have those this far north of the Mason Dixon line. It just can't happen.
So, my recommendation is to see what type of forage does well in your area, be it minnows, shiners, chubs, crayfish, etc and get that cooking. Then stock your bluegill and your bass on top of that.
A lot of good information has been shared here by people more knowledgeable than myself about stocking ratios for bluegill and bass and it seems that 20:1 is really where it starts for bluegill:bass in a trophy bass pond. I also believe that you shouldn't start with more than 50 largemouth per acre as an initial stocking either. So, that puts you around 1000 bluegills per acre and 50 largemouth per acre as a starting point. Many people advise stocking bluegill as heavily as 30:1 over bass for your initial stocking.
I do believe that genetics play a role in growing truly world record quality fish, but I believe that food has much more to do with an overall quality bass fishery than genes do.
