was like
playing a familiar song. Placing one foot on the bow of the boat, I pushed off
with the other. The boat glided away from the bank to the quiet lap of water
on sheet metal. A two-step over the middle seat brought me to rest on the rear
bench, where the tiller of the trolling motor seemed to find my hand on its
own. The 12-foot johnboat had already seemed to start on a silent course
parallel to the shoreline. In one fluid motion I launched what would become my
daily routine for years to come.
The plan was simple: If I did all the right things, in all the
right places, for a long enough period of time, I would eventually encounter
the most prized fish of all time: the next world-record bass.
I offer no wild excuses or incredible stories as to why that
encounter never happened, though there were many. It simply didn't. But I came
away from my experience with a sense of having been so close to finding that
fish and to understanding the biggest of the big largemouth bass so well that
I wouldn't trade the experience for any record on earth.
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Record-Breaking
Lures
llow me to pass you the saw before I climb out on this limb
and suggest some lures. Baitfish are virtually the only lake
forage source that exists in enough abundance to feed bass up
to giant size. My choice of lures with the greatest potential
would be fish imitators, with some specific characteristics.
First, they must be able to track at all depths, and, even
though my research has shown that the most probable depth to
find our record will be in 8 to 12 feet of water, they may at
times be deeper.
I would also choose lures that are close to
neutral buoyancy. These lures can be fished deep using weights
or lead lines, but they more closely resemble the natural
buoyancy and action of real baitfish when worked slowly and
erratically.
The lure should be long and thin, because
girth is the limiting factor in what a bass can swallow, and
the long thin profile allows for a bigger meal in a single
bite. If action is rendered by a plastic bill on the throat of
the lure, the action should be gentle and rolling like that of
a Rapala, and not one that causes the head of the lure to wag
back and forth. Many soft plastics and hard/soft combo lures
have action in the tail, which is more true to nature.
Finally, the winning lure should be metallic
and flashy, as opposed to barred and camouflaged.
Metallic-colored fish rely on schooling for defense and have
soft, non-spiny fins, while patterned fish tend to have sharp
spines that lodge in the fish's throat. That said, here are a
few suggestions to load in your big-bass arsenal:
1) Rapala size 18 (seven-inch) in silver or gold with a
black back.
2) A.C. Shiner size 675 (six-inch) in silver or gold
with a black back.
3) Castaic Lures' Rainbow Trout, Gizzard Shad or Golden
Shiner (hard/soft plastic combo).
4) Lunker City "Fin-S-Fish" in rainbow trout,
pearl with black back or smoke glitter pattern.
5) A.C. Plug in rainbow trout, shiner or shad color
pattern.
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The current world record emerged from the darkest days of the
Great Depression early in the last century. Many see the 69-year-old record as
unbreakable, yet I firmly believe someone will catch the new world-record bass
sometime in this century. Like Roger Bannister's breaking of the four-minute
mile, George Perry's mark (22 lb. 4 oz.) will never be forgotten. But because
of many new factors that now exist, it will almost certainly be surpassed.
Among these are new resources and improvements in existing resources, genetic
and other scientific breakthroughs and more broad-reaching management
priorities rather than single, statewide regulations. In fact, I believe we
are fast approaching the day when significant numbers of potential
world-record fish will be swimming in public waters. But if making the
ultimate catch is your lifelong dream, where do you begin?
It's Alive!
For a world-record largemouth to be caught, it must exist -- a pretty hard
premise to swallow when you ask yourself why, if even only a miniscule number
of such fish exist, one hasn't been caught already. After all, if you factor
in the increased knowledge that fishermen have gleaned in recent years
regarding techniques, lures and presentations, then add in the limited number
of likely places for such a bass to live, it would seem that if such a fish
existed, it would almost certainly have been caught by now.
Throwing out fraudulent or unverifiable claims, the record has
yet to be broken, so the logical conclusion is that up until today, such a
fish does not exist. It makes more sense, then, to say that the 22-pound bass
caught by Bob Crupi (on March 12, 1991, in California's Lake Castaic) was most
probably the biggest largemouth in existence at that time. I completely
discount claims of 24-pounders, because using even elementary statistics, the
existence of a 24-pound largemouth would require the presence of hundreds of
bass in the 22- to 23-pound range. Yet, by doubling the size of the
pre-Florida-strain state record, what Crupi's catch (and others) prove is the
power that population genetics and the introduction of the Florida genetic
strain can have on the eventual size of bass.
In fact, the possibility that a new world-record bass will
exist in the near future is being taken care of even as you read this. To
sense the winds of change, you need only visit the East Texas hamlet of
Athens, where a short distance out of town on a rural highway you'll find an
imposing set of gates marking the entrance to the Texas Freshwater Fisheries
Center (TFFC). Inside you'll discover what could aptly be described as the
"Area 51" of bass research. Aside from the magnificent public
aquariums housed within the center, TFFC possesses the most prestigious and
elaborate hatchery, laboratory and genetic-testing facilities completely
dedicated to determining the makeup and means of creating the largest bass on
the planet.
According to TFFC director Allen Forshage, the center's basic
idea is to approach the problem of isolating a genetic profile with
world-record potential from both ends.
Beyond Big
For years, Texas had its "ShareLunker" program, which allowed lucky
anglers to donate bass over 13 pounds to the program to be bred in captivity
and released a year later. The problem is that it has been impossible to
determine which environmental factors had a hand in the production of these
bass. By not only looking for top-end genetics but also selectively breeding
for initial fast growth, Texas is in a position to set a new standard by
studying the effects of genetics exclusive of the environment. Once fish are
hatched, the growth rates are so fast that it is easy to select the
fastest-growing few from millions of fry. These can be separated, and the
fastest-growing among them selected, ad infinitum.
If these fish were put in public water with an existing bass
population, the genetic traits would quickly dissipate, and there is no way
enough money can be found to raise millions of them to adult size in hatchery
facilities. Texas found an opportunity to grow big bass, however, in that the
state permits hundreds of new lakes to be impounded on private property for
the purposes of irrigation and watering cattle. These lakes start out
fishless, so many owners agree to have them designated "contract
lakes," which are stocked and managed to assess specific genetic strains
of bass. For the first time we have the potential to study different gene
profiles in a real-lake environment and make better predictions as to how
these bass would do if they were stocked in the wild.
Lake Echo, a small impoundment located on a private ranch in
central Texas, was one such contract lake stocked for the purpose of
evaluating the viability of Florida-strain bass in Texas water. Here, in 1981,
a man named John Alexander broke the long-standing Texas state record for
largemouth bass twice in one year, pushing the state mark from 14 lb. 1.5 oz.
to 15 lb. 8 oz. It is no longer a question of whether Texas will succeed, but
when.
Location, Location, Location
In order for a bass to grow to record size, conditions have to remain ideal 12
months a year over the fish's entire life span (at least 14 to 16 years). This
is why I believe that in a completely natural environment, a riverine system
has the highest odds of producing such a fish due to the stable mixing of
water and the constant motion of current. Unfortunately, most rivers,
particularly those in the South, have become polluted. A body of water like
Lake Champlain or the 1000 Islands area of the St. Lawrence River would be
perfect, if they existed at warmer latitudes.
In the future the scales will tip toward small to mid-sized
reservoirs like Lake Fork, located less than an hour's drive east of the
Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex. While it may seem big at 28,000 acres, Lake Fork
is dwarfed by sister lakes such as 181,000-acre Toledo Bend. The larger lakes
can be threatened by stagnation and even extensive fish-kills.
The smaller lakes are proportionately more affected by the
mixing influence of the river input, while still providing a large settling
area and extensive weed growth to absorb nutrients and clarify and filter the
water. The high nutrient levels in the lake support a huge biomass of
open-water baitfish, like threadfin shad. When plenty of deepwater cover is
available, usually in the form of flooded old-growth timber on the flats and
points leading to the main channel, the mix is complete. Bass can move out on
this structure and intercept a virtually limitless supply of food, in turn
growing to giant proportions.
Another man-made scenario that comes to mind is the canyon
reservoirs of Southern California. Many of these lakes are small and deep,
with water quality that provides good oxygen out to deep water. Clear mountain
streams and/or aqueducts are the primary water source for these impoundments.
Frequent stocking of rainbow trout for the put-and-take fishery in these lakes
is sufficient in and of itself to allow the giant bass population to gorge.
The climate is ideal for maximum growth, and the pen-raised trout are not
predator-wary, making them easy prey for bass. I believe a significant number
of bass could grow to their maximum potential feeding on no other source than
the trout trucks at the time of stocking.
One lake I consider a top contender to produce the new
world-record bass is California's Lake Casitas (not to be confused with Lake
Castaic). When this lake was still producing bass up to 21 lb. 3 oz., it was
closed and lowered some 40 feet for dam repair. Much of the exposed edge of
the lowered lake quickly grew back in thick brush and vegetation. Casitas has
recently been restored to its original level. What we now have is new vitality
on a lake that produced the first modern-era bass over 21 pounds, along with
unlimited submerged cover.
