january 16th 1996...... seems an age ago and a world away, it was the day i caught my biggest largemouth bass. luckily though at the time i didn't really pay much attention to keeping records of fish, this one was significant enough that i jotted down some of the details. a lot of it is still very clear in my memory. it was a cold chilly hawaii winter morning. back then my fishing partner and myself fished off of a 14ft hobiecat. the mast had broken off and we used it as a kind of pontoon boat. it worked very well actually, light and maneuverable easy to paddle . i can't recall if we were still on paddle power or had the electric trolling motor hooked up yet. in any case we did the majority of our fishing up into south fork. it was closer and in our range with a battery or paddle. and of all of south fork we enjoyed fishing what we then called the "cove" now better known as rose street slough. we had many fish stories in that place and often as other boats ran down into the main basin or up towards north fork we would have the whole of south fork to ourselves. all of my biggest fish have come from south fork. one friend that accompanied us out on a trip made the comment " turn the corner and your not in hawaii anymore" he was right it was our escape. this particular morning we had run up toward rose street slough and being the "fisherman" we were we knew we had only a limited time to get up there for the morning bite ( don't fish always magically bite at first light hahaha) we pulled up into the opening of the slough and i had rigged up a flat sided bassproshop coffin billed crankbait. made out of jelutong wood, basically a different kind of balsa. it maybe had a max depth of 6ft. silver sides with a light chartreuse back. we usually turned to the left as we fished the slough, our best spots were to the left. for some reason we turned right this particular morning. there is a small point directly to the front as you enter the cove and we started there. i can't recall what my friend was throwing but i was determined to use my new crankbait. we did a lot of run and gunning those days, just run down a bank casting never hitting the same spot for more than a cast or two. we had made about 3 or 4 casts a piece. i was on the right pontoon, we stood on the pontoons like casting decks. it put us literally at water level. there was a downed ironwood tree just off to my side about 30-40ft away and i had the first cast to it. i had read that anytime you cast a lure out you were supposed to let the bait sit there for a bit, maybe a few seconds and let the rings go out, this was supposed to give the fish a chance to look at it. i dunno if its a bunch of crap or not but i was in my learning stages still and it seemed plausible so i did it on every bait i had that floated hahahaha. so the bait sits for a few seconds, and back then the water was always high and super clear with all the grass beds up there. i started to wind it down and it got down to just before you lose sight of a crankbait, maybe 3ft or so and a huge black and green swirl grabbed it! i had a few seconds of a fight and man it felt big, but it took drag and in those days our reels were the cheapest baitcasters you could get here in hawaii, they were no match for a fish of this caliber. it was soon quite tangled in the tree. at first i could feel it, then nothing......... at the time a 4$ crankbait wasn't worth losing to us impoverished surfer dudes. the fish was lost but i was damned gonna get my lure back!! so i stripped down outa my sweats, i had board shorts on underneath and proceeded to stick my leg into the chilly lake water. brrrrrrrrrr........ my whole leg submersed and still couldn't get ahold of the branch the lure was on. jumped in ( young and brave aka stupid and poor lol) i swam myself to the tree and went under feet first several times trying to get to the branch my lure was on. no luck, dove under head first finally followed the line down but still couldn't find the right branch. it seemed the line was wrapped around several. i finally was ready to give up and break it off. my close friend and partner decided he was taller and i was having wayyyyyyy to much fun so in he dove to assist. what a site that woulda been, two dumbasses diving under the water trying to find something.......... in the south they call it noodling!! hahahaha thats gonna piss someone off.anyway he managed to get his toes on the line and make several attempts into the tree limbs. finally on one he came up shouting there was something still on the line!! no sooner had he said it than this behemoth fish surfaced not 12in in front of me and started to slowly swim away!! i was in shock all the while my friend screaming to get my pole!! get on the boat!!! its still hooked!! i snapped out of it grabbed my pole still in the water and pulled myself onto the pontoon. another great thing about the hobie cat was it was very easy to get back onto. i didn't get much of a fight but dragged the surfaced fish over onto the boat just as my friend flipped himself onto the trampoline . i couldn't believe the size of this fish!! by far the largest we had caught in the 4 years of frenzied bass fishing we had been doing. at the time i thought maybe id catch more like this, that this wasn't an anomaly but rather a progression of our prowess. i know now how rare such a fish is in our little lake. its been 16 years!!!!!!! and i have a few 5lbers and several 4lbers and quite a few 3s but nothing this size since!!! one has to wonder if our cheap scale was even right on the weight, i wish we had taken dimensions to check with that equation that determines weight. just to see if we were close. it seemed so huge and still dwarfs a lot of pictures of bass i have seen that claim to be 10lbs!! alas we shall never know. we took a few pictures and hastily returned to mammoth to the lake hopefully to breed and multiply. it was very stressed and wore out after being stuck for 15 to 20 min around those tree limbs. 16 years is a long time. between giants, recently there have been more reports of big mamas being caught. several in the 6lb range a couple of 8 pluses. and a 7lber last year in a tournament with pics to prove it!! i have been hurling swim baits and big bass baits trying to find my trophy but to no avail yet, it all comes down to time on the water i know i can get one with enough time on the water!! its not uncommon to see 5lb tucs and the occasional 6lbers maybe even 7lbers. but any bass over 3 lbs here is a hawg and anything over 5lbs is a trophy!! the quest will continue!! hell it took that very same partner of mine 16years to get his 6lb 9 oz trophy , on another island !! hahaha same exact weight how do you like that!!! it turned out to be a magical day with my friend out fishing me in numbers it seemed the lake was on fire with fish biting every few casts. in no time we had boated 25 fish between us. nothing so large as the first one but at several points my friend had more weight than i he was doing so well!! alas the trip ended early around lunch and lord only knows what we could have done if we had stayed out all day!! a magical day none the less and a fish i have yet to best!
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