Seth Spry had been fishing alone from shore in a small pond in northern West Virginia’s Harrison County for less than an hour about mid-day on May 8 when the bluegill bait he’d tossed out with a bobber started going wild. The crazed 5-inch ‘gill darted left and right, headed deep, then rushed to the surface.
“It was obvious a good bass was after that bluegill,” said Spry, the 31-year-old gas company employee from Lumberport, W. Va told Wired2fish. “I’d fished the same spot with a live bluegill bait two weeks previously and I lost a giant bass when it jumped and threw my bait.
“I figured it was the same bass trying for another meal.”
Indeed, it was. And when Spry’s bluegill bait quivered at the pond surface, a largemouth bass crushed the panfish, and the battle was on.
“The big bass jumped immediately, and I fought it for a few minutes before I got it close to shore and landed it,” he said. “I had a tape measure with me and it was 27 inches long. That’s when I called West Virginia’s DNR and told them I caught a record fish and to send someone out with a measuring board to get an official size of it.”
Worth the Wait
Spry said he waited three hours for state biologist Dustin Smith to arrive at the pond to weigh and measure his catch. Spry kept the largemouth bass alive on a stringer near the pond bank until Smith arrived to document the bass and aid in releasing it back into the pond.
Smith measured Spry’s 9.85-pound bass at 26.378 inches long to become a new West Virginia record length largemouth. The old 25.75-inch record bass was caught in 2001 by Eli Gain in Harrison County’s Dog Run Lake.
The state record 12.28-pound largemouth was caught in 1994 from a farm pond in Grant County by David W. Heeter.
Spry says his 9.85-pounder was a lean, spawned-out female without roe. Whether his fish would have broken the state weight record if he’d caught weeks the bass earlier with spawn will never be known.
Not Taking Chances the Second Time Around
Spry used stout bait-casting tackle and 30-pound test braided line to catch his new state record length largemouth.
“I used a wide gap, long shark 4/0 hook I use for plastic worms,” Spry said. “The first time I hooked that bass and it jumped, I was using a much smaller hook. I think the bigger, long shank hook allowed me to set the hook better using that bluegill bait, and I landed the fish.”
Spry fished the pond many times after losing the giant bass the first time. He tried different lures. But finally settled on using a bluegill bait with a bobber near where he lost the bass the first time.
Spry is considering having a replica mount made by a taxidermist of his new state length record largemouth bass.
“I’m looking into having a taxidermist mount a replica,” he says. “I don’t know if that bass would have been a record weight fish had I not lost it two weeks before I caught it because it had a heavier, roe-swollen belly.
“But I do know where I released that bass. And there’s always next spring to maybe catch her again – this time a few weeks earlier.”
