A Florida Bass Story

While I still enjoy fishing in my new home state of Arizona, I grew up and went to college in Florida. While attending college, I was fortunate enough to live on a very "wild" river in West Central Florida called the Withalacooche. I also put in a lot of time in the Gulf of Mexico fishing for my favorite quarry, Speckle Trout. I'll admit now that I never did embrace my father's teaching of fully rinsing off my equipment after a salt water trip and this often caused me problems with corrosion in my reels. 

I had a pretty good record, using large wild shiners for bait. My largest Bass to this date was 9.5 pounds.  I had frequently pulled in 5 pounders. One day I was heading out the canal toward the river and passing a boat ramp noted an old couple struggling to get a small John boat into the back of their pickup truck. I beached my boat and ran over to help. They made a sincere offer of gratitude by asking if I wanted their shiners since they were done fishing. These were "store bought" shiners...  always very weak, they don't live long on the line. Long life on the line is important when fishing for lunkers. I didn't want to insult them so I accepted the offer, even though I had half a dozen wild shiners, all over 9" left. (the store bought ones are only about 4" long).

The Bass were obviously hungry that day and my wild shiners soon ran out along with the luck of one 8 pound fat belly.  I was reduced to using those dreaded store bought shiners to finish out my evening.

My favorite tactic, as always, was to free line a shiner by an underwater structure.  No bobber, no sinker,  just put the shiner in upstream of the obstruction.

Look for a underwater structure like a tree, which will hold  vegetation on the surface, forming an island in the  river.  Allow the shiner to swim by the area as natural as possible. 

I had cast my bait to just the right spot and as I watched my line float on the surface I saw the telltale "twitch" indicating the first strike, which is when the bass scales the bait and the second twitch is when he spits it out in order to get the shiner going in head first. (Learned this via Bass in my home aquarium)

I set the hook on the second strike. I knew immediately I had a very large fish on.  It could be a big river cat. I worked the fish close to the boat and suddenly the biggest large mouth I had ever seen was shaking it's head and exploding the surface. Before the thrill of that could sink in I paid the price for my poor reel maintenance....my reel froze up, solid. I thought quick and started hand working the line in and wouldn't you know...old bucket mouth got over near the outboard and I thought all was lost. He was hard to control by hand but I managed to keep him out of the motor and got him back around to the corner of the transom. With my right hand holding the line I reached down and grabbed the big boys gapping mouth...man he was big, real big and I knew it.

As I started to pull him up with my left arm I realized the tension had just broken my line, but I couldn't be distracted now. I hoisted the big Hawg into the boat and dropped him into the live well.  All the emotion flooded in. It was a world record!! Yes...I was using your brand of reel, your lure, your line, your boat...you bet...SHOW ME THE MONEY...I was literally screaming Yahoo (pre dot com days!) because I knew I just had to be a rich man, I had never seen a Bass that size.

My boat became a rocket as I raced home.  I just knew it went to at least 24 pounds.

Well, it was only 14.8 pounds. Not really a world record but for 15 or 20 minutes, I sure thought so.

Oh, the reason the line came free was that the hook had broken mid shaft. This is a real story. Its my story and I'm stricken to it.

Ken Coon