Whats The Story Behind Your Personal Best?

[NILBasser]

My own PB is 7.5lbs which I have done twice so far. The first one was my first legit "big" fish, over 5lbs. I caught her on Father's Day fishing a chrome/black Risto Rap in open water where schools of bass were chasing shad. I was fishing solo that day and she was the first fish of the day about 5 minutes into the day. And yes I was pumped!!! The second was caught right here on the lake I live on in May of '06 off of a bed. This was the first fish I ever really "worked" to get a strike. I fished this fish for more than an hour before finally getting her to hit a jig. It took bringing the jig in over her shoulder from right to left and she just smoked it like she had not seen a bait before, awesome!!! And I threw alot of baits at that fish before she finally hit. God I can't wait for open water!!!!

[camman]

Great stories.

My PB came out of a popular lake in SoCal. It was during the spawn and was really windy. We had been fishing out in deeper water for most of the day getting a few pre-spawn fish but nothing of size. We roll in shallow and I can barely make what looks like a bed and a small male sitting on the bed. I flip a RI Beaver over just beyond the male and I see it take off. Oh well, I pop the bait once and as I start to reel in, my line takes off. I set the hook and casually bring the fish in as I thought it was the small male I had seen. I'm trying to force it in as I thought it had maybe wrapped when a huge fish jumps. Once I realize what I have I start to baby the fish and avoiding the weeds. My buddy nets it and it goes 14.2 lbs.....grab a quick photo and off she goes.

[bassman31783]

Every year my friend Hans and I try to take a spring fishing trip to Lake Fork. 2yrs ago we had our trip planned for early March but when the time actually came for our fishing trip we didn't get a chance to get out on the water because of storms. A month later we got our chance to go back to Fork and fish it on a day.

When we got on the water we went to our favorite spot, threw on a few hollow body swimbaits and proceeded to have our best day on Lake Fork. We had decided that on this particular day that we would try and get some video of the fish we catch and put together a little fishing trip video.

Within 10min of launching the boat we were at our spot swimming our lures through patches of hydrilla when my lure just stopped dead in it's tracks. I reared back and set the hook and imeaditely knew it was a nicer fish. I shouted out to Hans to get the camera out of the bag and start taking some video. As he was getting his camera ready my bass cleared the water to show me just how big it was, at which point I shouted back at Hans "forget the camera and get the net!!" After a short but furious fight we landed my bass, put her on the scale, took a few pics, and sent her on her way. 9lbs 2oz.

After that we proceeded to catch big bass after big bass. Just after 1hr we took our 5 largest and it was over 30lbs. Heck of a day topped off with me catching my PB.

[jkarol24]

Caught my PB in the tourney i won in NY, a 4.78 lb LM as a co-angler. So anyways, its probably 1 PM or so (2 hours left in the tourney) and i've got probably 14 lbs and whipping my boater. As you can imagine, this guy is not to happy with me... So we are running a stretch of docks and he noses up to this big ol' nice looking dock, puts down the power pole and looks back at me. He goes "alright, this is MY dock, don't cast on it". I'm doing alright so i think to myself is all good, he's had a long day, i'l just turn around and keep fishing the previous dock behind us. So anyways, im skippin lures into this dock, cast after cast and am getting nothing. Im trying to get my lure into a nice little spot, and i finally got it just right on maybe the 25th cast. Sure enough, the line twitches and i set the hook and this pig comes flying out of the dock and under the boat. My boater notices this, drops his rod, nets the fish and dumps it in the bottom of the boat, and proceeds to fish "his" dock without success. To make it even crazier, i look down at this bass and its completely blind in one eye My boater may have come in the top 3 for Angler of the Year, but i won on that day. The fish is the LM bass in my left hand (right side of the pic) in my avatar.

[Brent Christian]

My pb came from the Ohio river, there was a barge half way sunk wit a weed bed in it, water about a foot an a half deep, threw a black buzz bait and no soon it hit the weeds there she blew almost 7 pounds!

[Borderline11]

My brother and I made a spontaneous decision to drive from our parents house in PA to Georgia the day after christmas to do some bass fishing as we both had the week off. We made arrangements to fish at a place called Little River Plantation, not far from where we were staying in Tifton. The place is a 20k acre private hunting preserve with apparently some world class quail hunting, but we were just looking to do a little fishing. There was some miscommunication on our end and when we arrived on Tues, we were told they were planning on us coming on Thursday and weren't really ready for us to go out. We didn't mind as we heard of a place called the Paradise Public Fishing Area that apparently holds some big fish and just figured we'd come back in two days. Any how, as we're driving down the road, the gentleman who runs LRP chased us down and apologized, realizing that we just drove 17 hrs to go fishing, and happily put us on two of his lakes with ample shore fishing. At this point, we're both ecstatic and get to the flicking and dipping quick. We start reeling em in! I have a brief moment of hysteria/exhaustion at mid day, where it seemed like I was loopy or drunk from not sleeping in two days, and sort of hit a rut. My brother, being the great older brother and fishing partner that he is, points out an area that he seemed positive would be holding fish and told me to give it a go. I notice a submerged log maybe ten feet down (clarity was excellent) and drop a carolina rigged 10" worm to the bottom and slowly pop it along the length of the tree. It only took four or five twitches for my PB to smash the worm and go on a run. My reel started screaming as I was using my micro setup (small garcia on a 5' rod) and it got to the point where I literally couldn't get so much as an inch of line in. I end up grabbing the reel with my left hand in between spins to stop the fish from pulling more line out. This fight goes on for what felt like several minutes, where I'm screaming for my brothers help, as I'm almost positive my rod was about to snap. He comes running over and immediately asks how in the world I got stuck on the submerged tree just when the bucket mouth girl breaks the surface. At which point he's as giddy as I am and we're both sort of doing what must have looked like some kind of irish jig dance as we angle this thing to the shore. Eventually I'm able to lip her, which leads to more high fives, chest bumps, strange celebratory noises and finally some pictures. Being from PA, I view anything over 4lbs as a big fish, and while we didn't have a scale to put an exact weight on it, I knew it was easily my biggest LM! We came back to LRP on Thursday and had ourselves a 30 fish day, but none topping that big girl. It was the perfect vacation and what will probably become an annual tradition for my brother and I. Here's a pic of my PB!

[gpbassbuster1]

my best was back in nov of last year- it was on a wednesday, wasnt suppose to be at joe pool lake, was suppose to be at lake fork. anyway in the am as soon as i got there a boat was flagging me down, he had broken down so i towed him in to the marina. so i went back to fishing - it had been about 5 to 6 hours and no bites, i mean nothing so i started to go by one more spot, and darn if there was another boat waving me down. i said to myself there is no way twice in one day. so i towed them in as well. called my wife and told her that i will be home soon, told her the story of what happened that day and said "i have done my good deed for today". i then told her i was going to try this one last spot. threw my red trap and slam, 8#er. i couldnt believe it. when i arrived at home i told her and she replied, looks like someone was listening and rewarded me with that catch.

[backcast88]

I caught my personal best in the summer of 2006 in a small pond when I was 17 while working at a Boy Scout camp in the NC mountains.

I was working as a camp counselor teaching fishing and fly fishing and the week was coming to a close and all the scouts had completed their merit badges but I was required to hold class so I told them all to meet me on the dam of the lake. We had been there almost 30 minutes and all the kids had caught a good number of Bluegill and a couple real small bass and I had been working to take their fish off to maximize their fishing time. When there was a lull on the action I took my rod with a texas rigged Zoom Pumpkinseed u tail worm and tossed it into a submerged tree top. I felt a small thump on the fall and set the hook. The kid closest too me chuckled b/c he thought I had hung the tree but once he noticed the action in my rod he yelled out "he's got a giant" and all the other kids came running over. It took me a couple minutes to get the fish out of the tree top but once I got the fish to the bank I knew it was my best. One of the kids grabbed the digital scale from my backpack and it came in a 7 lbs 11 oz. I fished around the edge for the rest of the day with my other classes and by myself and landed several dozen bass between 1 and 3 lbs and it was a blast.