Westapalmdude, Jason, and I went to my neighborhood lake this evening to have some fun catching 1-3 pounders on beetle spins with #6 mono.
Let me start by describing this lake. Max depth= 34'. Water visibility= 5-10'. Vegitation= Eel grass. Springy angel hair pasta looking grass.
Biggest bass I personally know of being caught and released from this lake was 13lbs.
Lake is at least 25 yrs old.
On to the story.
I caught 2 dinks about 1/2-1lb on the beetlespin. Jason and I had a few other short strikes but nothing major. The wind was blowing from the east which blew the bait to our end of the lake.
The minnows/shad would scatter across the top as our line cut through the school.
I made my cast into about 10' of water and began the retrieve. My beetlespin came up the drop to about 4' when all I felt was something extremely heavy on the other end. I never had a chance to even set the hook and quite frankly didn't have to.
This fish made a wake as if you were dragging a boulder behind your boat just under the surface. She headed due east along the bank about 15' from shore. The drag was SCREAMING so I tightened down a bit, actually d**n near hammered.
I fill my spools to the max so I had about 105 yards of line. I looked down at my reel and could see metal through the line. OH CRAP, I'm being spooled. Now SHE jumped and made a whale of a splash and continued her run. Jason and I took off RUNNING along the bank towards her, trying to gain some line.
Just as I almost have her directly parallel to me, she turns and hauls azz North to deep water and ain't slowing down. All that line I gained is now GONE and I can't turn her. She bogs down in the heavy grass and all I can feel are head shakes. I try pulling her in and managed to get about 5' of line when she pulls, taking back 7'. Now she stops and I can't budge her. She is buried in the grass and still shaking her head but I can't pull her in.
Now I have caught hundreds and hundreds of Snook. This is a Snook
as well as Tarpon, Sea Trout and Redfish while wading the flats using U/L gear but let me tell ya, this monster was easily double digits.
Jason and I, to no avail, made every effort to get this BEAST in. Jason even tried to find a Jon boat in someone's backyard that we could use to track her down. But, no boat.
It's been a good, hard 15 minutes and she still tries to make short runs. I'm able to raise about 20 yards of line up and out of the water and the line is covered in eel grass. The remaining 70 or so yards of line has tunneled through the grass. I'm done. My only chance is to swim down to her. I empty my pockets and into the water I go. I wade out a bit and realize it gets deep quick and the grass is THICK. No way a can safely go further w/out risk of drowning in the grass.
I get out of the water and and slowly start walking backwards while holding the spool, testing the rod and line strength ( Loomis warranty lets you test your rod to the extreme). I can still feel her head shakes and I get a good amount of line in and then, OOPS, hook pulled.
I get the beetlespin in and noticed the hook is actually bent. Man, what a disappointment. This was the biggest freshwater fish I have EVER hooked and I got my azz KICKED.
I only hope she stays in this general area because Jason I are most certainly going back for a rematch. Here are a few pic's Jason took.
These are me just hopelessly watching my spool and Jason as she peels line.
This is me trying to get line back and thinking hard about going for a swim. She is about half way across the lake.
Oh well, always tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
