Honoring Largemouths Near Five Pounds and Better

I've liked catching 20-inch bass ever since catching my first one in 1976. I believed that one weighed five pounds, because that's what my Deliar told me, minus the quarter pound it registered when not weighing anything. It was a rounder fish than the one I caught this morning, so it wasn't far from five pounds. Plenty of the ones I've caught like this one today seem to have barely touched on four pounds, if that, but others have been close to the higher mark. I'm sure the 21 1/2-incher I caught in 2021 beat it, and the 23 1/4-incher from Merrill Creek Reservoir I caught in 2018 was way over. 

Like today, I had got up while still dark out the morning I caught my first 20-incher, only instead of driving to Cronk's house to meet and then ride in his truck with my canoe in the back to the lake, I pedaled my Schwinn 10-speed about a mile, catching the bass on a Gudebrod Blabberouth, an eighth-ounce topwater plug, when daylight brightened fresh and overcast like this morning. Later that morning, as a family we left for a vacation on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and I trembled in awe of my catch for half the ride down there. As I remember it, that vacation marked the first I fished largemouths in North Carolina. My fishing log can prove whether or not that memory suffices, but I'm certain it does, because there was a girl my age, 15, on the beach, and I remember walking through the dunes to one of the Currituck Sound canals with a fishing rod, thinking of her. 

Last year, I caught no bass 20 inches or better, and I've felt all year so far that I didn't want that happening again. The year previous, I caught six or seven of them, maybe 8, as large as 21 inches and maybe an ounce or two over five pounds. Not many big ones as a few New Jersey bass anglers rack 'em up, but a real pleasure for me. I have so much to thank Brian Cronk for, because all of them I caught on his watch. On the private lake and on Clinton Reservoir where we launched his boat. All of these more recent years, he's caught plenty of them 20 inches and better, fishing the lake with greater frequency than I have. He caught one through the ice that might have been a few ounces over five pounds, measured at 21 inches.

I caught a few bass 20 inches and a half inch better in my teens, the bigger from that same pond, another from Rosedale Lake in Lawrence, and the creatures fill space like mythical gods in a way, because the concrete reality they did and do occupy would impress anyone. After all, to think such fish exist is to posit an object of contemplation that knows no end when it comes to the question of how it is possible. Most of us haven't the time, nor do I, to live close to the miracle of it, but it doesn't hurt to touch base a little. Some say that's what church is for, but I say bass will do, as messy as an outing gets. 

Since my teens, it took me decades before I caught my next 20-incher, from Round Valley Reservoir in 2014. I hadn't begun fishing seriously again until 2004, and I owned nothing like a boat until 2011, when my son and I fished from an inflatable raft on occasion. (We did rent boats a lot, and I had my Boater's Safety Certificate.) By the best I could stretch a measuring tape, the one from Round Valley was a hair--like 1/128th of an inch--under, but I called it 20. I began catching 20-inch and better bass each year since 2018, fishing the lake with Brian often since 2019. 

And 16-, 17-,18-inch bass are frequent. Brian's today was probably 16 1/2. My other two 17 and 18. Brian got a pickerel he called a Cuban cigar. Everything on Chatterbaits today, when otherwise we lost so many bass and pickerel that, had we caught half of them, we would have finished the three hours on the water with a fair number.

I do like the weedy upper portion of the lake, where I lost a bass and a pickerel on a Baby Torpedo topwater plug, missing hits besides. Brian missed a big hit on his Booyah frog. But as Brian showed me, the lower area of the lake mostly free of weeds where the water is a foot or two deeper holds both bass pickerel. We lost a number of pickerel that hit boat side. I caught my 20-inch largemouth, lost another bass about 16 inches, and Brian and I both missed hits.

An interesting interlude to the work drama. I came home, fell asleep for three hours, and when I awoke thought of the job, realizing I hadn't thought of it at all out there.  

18-Inch Largemouth

17-Inch Largemouth

Currituck