Spring 2005 my dad and I decide to make a father/son trip to Lake Fork. This was the first time I had ever been on a lake where a double digit bass was even a possibility. The months leading up to the trip were excruciating ..... and expensive. Many trips with the bait monkey to Cabelas. So the night before the trip I make one last trip up to Cabelas and just browse more than anything. I was about to leave emptied handed when I spotted the "Bargain Bin". I can't remember the price (it was either $.99 or $1.99), but they had some square lipped crankbaits .... Strike King Series 4S to be exact. I picked up about 2 of every color I could find.
So we drive down and I will never forget seeing the lake for the first time. Talk about being blown away . Bass Heaven!!!!!! The morning couldn't come soon enough. That morning was awesome. It was just one of those days where you feel like you are on cloud nine. So we hit the lake around 10:00. I was up and ready to go MUCH earlier, but the boat rental guy held us back a couple hours (yes the infamous Ricky ). We mainly drove around the lake for an hour just checking it out. Found Little Caney to our liking and found the first strip of "open" water and hit it. I first threw one of my Strike King Series 4S cranks I got out of the bargain bin. My plan was to hit areas near spawning flats and see if I couldn't get a big prespawn female. 30 minutes went by and nothing. I made a cast to an area that had a small creek channel that dumped into a BIG spawning area. I made a cast past the channel and cranked her in trying to hit every tree I could. I bounced off a little tree and felt a tick. I continued to reel in and found my a bunch of grass on my crank. So I thought the "tick" was just going through the grass. But I decided to make the same cast once more to be sure. This time I bounced off the same tree and WHAM!!!!!! I knew I had something descent on, but had no clue just how big. She dove straight towards the boat and I reeled with everything I had to keep up. She stayed deep for what seemed like forever. Then I finally got my first glimpse of her ...... WOW . I had never seen a fish that big so I had no clue how big she was. I remember thinking to myself it was for sure a Share-a-Lunker and maybe even close to a state record ;D : But what did I know. All I knew that it was SIGNIGANTLY bigger than any other bass I had ever caught. She broke the surface right around the boat and that drew in quite the crowd. For all that have fished Fork during the spawn you know that you are about a three or four cast links away from another boat at just about all times. About 4 or 5 other boats came around and watched me land her which I thought was kind of cool. She made a couple hard runs by the boat, but alas I lipped her and she was in the boat.
I just kind of sat there for a moment completely blown away by what just happened while my dad stumbled around for the camera. A couple other boats came right by us and examined the fish and congradulated me. I even had another guy ask me for a picture. ........ then I heard my dad say "You're going to kill me. I left the camera back in the room." NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO By that time the guy who had just snapped my pic had zoomed off and there was no way were going to catch him in the little boat we had. All I have is a crappy picture from a camera phone . Somewhere out there some guy has a better pic of my PB than I do. We considered putting her in the livewell and going to get the camera and then release her, but I didn't want to put her through the stress.
She went 10 lbs 8 oz off a bait in the bargain bin. Not a bad deal
Here's the link from back in 2005
http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1112129041/0
