Big Bass...

You may have heard the Robert Earl Keen "Five Pound Bass." I remeber when I was a kid and fishing Sam Rayburn with my dad how catching a 5 pound bass was a pretty big deal. I remember camp-outs where when a big bass was caught we would run up to the old Hank's Creek Marina to us their to weigh a big fish.  scales and show it off. Now a days I have a nice set of digital scales in the boat and I think the modern  bass fisherman merely declares a 5 pound bass "good fish" and goes on in search of double digit numbers. Yesterday I did a personal best by catching a seven pound 3 ounce largemouth bass. I was by my self so it was hard to get a good picture of me and the bass. 

Here he is. The thing that makes this so notable is that I caught him on 4 pound test line and a 1/32 ounce  

H & H spinner. I was bream fishing. I guess this fish was bream fishing also. After taking the bait up a little creek channel he swam to deeper water, about 5 feet. I thought at first this might be a giant catfish because he stayed under like that. I kept steady pressure to tire the fish, there was one jump and I netted at the side of the boat. The four pound would have never lifted this fish in the boat. All this took under ten minutes.  

This is a look down his throat. When I was a kid I was always trying to cure an old bass head by stretching it over a mayonnaise jar and salting it.with the idea it would dry in an open position kind of like shark jaws. I think my parents loved this experiment. My mother still occasionally mentions it. He's not swimming in my belly. I released this fish and whispered "grow big" in his ear.

The lure. That's a 1/32 ounce H & H spinner. I guess that old bass thought to have just a little snack. The H & H bait company is located in Baton Rouge. I used to joke that cajuns who made this lure scientifically designed it to fit exactly in a breams mouth. They make them in Honduras now instead of Baton Rouge so I guess Hondurans know the exact size of a breams mouth also.  

Here's Robert Earl: