GamblerFL

You ever think you had a bad day on the lake? Monday evening it was over-cast and the lake I fish seems to really pick up when it looks like rain. Since the boat was already in the water, I figured I would give it a shot. I loaded the boat up and turned the key. All I got was a click. I pulled the cowling off and found that the starter bolt had worked itself out a little and it had the ground wire loose. I made several turns on the bolt and she fired right up. I took off out across the lake and decided to use a spinner bait up against some branches in the water. I was working the spinner right at the surface. After a few cast I saw a nice swirl and had the spinner grabbed.I set the hook and to my surprise a roughly 4 to 5 pounder came up and threw the lure. I couldn't believe it so of course a threw several more time with no hits. I started working down the shore a little further and had another nice hit, that I missed. Over the first 30 minutes of fishing, I lost 4 fish. I figured I would cut across an area that is about 200 yards wide and fish the side of an island. On the way over I picked up and threw a rattle trap. I had a hit but it felt like something bumped it but didn't grab it. A few more cast later and I had a hit like no other. Just about pulled the rod out of my hand. Before I knew it I hear a noise like a fire-cracker and my line snapped right at the reel. I hurried to tie on another rattle-trap. In my hurrying, I pulled the line and tied on and got a back-lash I couldn't get out. I grabbed another rod and tied on a rattle-trap just as it started raining. I packed up and took off. About 3/4 of the way back, running pretty fast, the motor dies down. Being that I have a Gambler I ended up with about a 3 foot wake right over the back of the boat. I got the motor fired up but only ran a very short way before she stopped again. (ended up being a fuel pump) I put the trolling motor down (now in a pretty good rain) and headed home. I pulled up to the boat dock and grabbed the handle to pull the motor up and the rope broke. I grabbed a 4-way screw driver to release the pin and the bit fell off into the water. I flipped it over and finally got the motor up now it was pouring down rain. I tied up and grabbed everything and headed to the house. I was soaked, missed 5 fish, lost a new rattle-trap, lost part of the screw driver, broke the trolling motor rope, didn't know at the time if the motor was blowing up and was pretty mad. I changed into something dry and sat down fuming. I turned on the tv while thinking of all the things that had happened and still pretty mad. The first thing on tv was about a 21 year old soldier that was killed over in Iraq. As I sat there I realized how lucky I was to be in a position to have had the problems I had!

Im with you. I never bed fish. This is just for me but the satisfaction of catching a large bass without seeing it is better than being able to watch the fish take the bait.

If it was based on pure speed and looks I would go with the Gambler... The Gambler I have is the 19 foot Intimidator. The front deck is huge. There is plenty of room up front for two people. The only complaint I would have with this boat is the back fisherman doesnt have much room to fish. If he or she wants to stand to fish it is fine. If the fisherman wants to sit and fish the seat is so far forward that they cant help from having their shoes on the top side of the bench seat. If I were going to buy a new boat I would look at the new Gambler 21 foot and also a Triton. I was at the Bassmasters tournament here in Florida and the ones the pro's use for the last two days of the tournament are really nice boats.

Yes let me know. I would be interested in that. It is pretty wild about motors these days. The power they have to spin the props is so much better than it used to be. I know back in the late 70's we would have been happy if we were able to run a 21 pitch.

Thats good speed for that boat. If you still have a problem with the rpm's I would look into lowering the plate a little to see if that helps.

I hope it works out good for you. Thats a lot of pitch for a 125. I think if the motor isnt too high on the transom you might find you will have a problem getting out of the hole.

How high are you running your motor on the transom? Of course with most props you lose in one area and gain in another. If you run a low pitch like 15 to 19 you can usually plane off pretty fast but you dont have the top end because you are turning too many rpm's. A high pitch like you have or higher you usually cant get on plane fast but pick up a lot of top end. Most of the time with a pretty high pitch the problem you have is not getting the rpm's high enough. I run a 26 pitch on my 150. (It came with the boat) I dont plane off real fast but the boat will run right at 70 on the gps. It is a 4-blade prop. I dont know if you bought your boat new or not but a lot of the times you will find people will jack the motor up on the transom. Once you get going and you get the boat trimed up out of the water the motor is running so high it will almost cavatate and will send the rpm's up high.

1994 Gambler Intimidator 19' Mariner 150 Magnum III Minn Kota Motorguide

I know everyone is looking to keep the waters clean. But when I run 40 gallons of gas through my 2-stroke, I would think it would take a lot of cans of WD-40 to match the amount of oil I have put into a lake. I have never used WD-40, but I'm not so sure it would make a big difference when you look at all the 2-stroke outboards and wave runners out on the water. If you want to see what a 2-stroke puts in a lake, start your outboard in a garbage can full of water. Run it a few minutes, shut the motor off and stick your arm in the can. Make sure you have a good hand cleaner handy because you will need it.

Fisher of Men...I agree 100%. To me that would be a trip of a life time. The first time I ever saw that top water action, I realized I have never really been top water fishing...

Nice looking fish. I dont mean just the size but they have very nice color. They look really healthy.

Look at the nile perch at the bottom. Man oh man!

1) Spinnerbait 2) Rattle trap If I just had to catch fish, any fish, it would be a silver Rapala minnow.

This has been a hot one. I thought it might change it up a little from other topics. I think it has been a good one. There is no right or wrong answer, it is just interesting to read about how most people would look at it. I think what would be real interesting is if the record did fall to a different country. Makes you wonder if it did fall to another country if people then would start saying it shouldnt count because the bass shouldnt have been there. ;D

I agree with you. It is sort of strange that last night on Hank Parker outdoors they were fishing Castaic lake. I didnt get to see the begining of the show but I believe he must have been fishing with a couple of the guys that were after the record. There was one other guy in his own boat that was also part of the show. That is one nice looking lake. I wish we had lakes here in Florida that looked like that. While they were filming they showed the truck back up to the side of the lake and dump a huge tank full of trout into the lake. It was interesting that they seemed to be waiting for the truck and fishing where it dumped. They were using a huge 8 inch long swim bait rainbow trout. I was suprised and even Hank Parker was saying he couldnt believe the size of the lure. They of course didnt catch any 20 + pound bass but they pulled in a few 12+ pound bass. This whole thread might not even matter. There is a lake that they feel will produce the next world record. It also has the Florida strain bass but the interesting thing about it is, bassmasters is part of it. If this does happen the world record will leave the united states. This lake is 10,250 miles from Lake Castaic. It is in Zimbabwe and thats where Ray Scott feels the record will come from. To answer the subject brought up above about the world record that Perry caught not being a record if it were caught today because of not having the information needed. It was writen above that the size of the bass was taken from Perry and his brother. The pictures below is on the way to Lake Montgomery where he caught it. It shows the pictures of the bass and also seems to show it laying by a ruler.

I just read your column. It was a pretty good write up. The only thing I would say is that I dont hope the 22 pounds 4 ounce bass record lasts forever. I would like to see it be broken. I just hope across the board people will have to face the fact that it has fallen. When one of those lakes in California breaks it, I can bet you the bass world as a whole wont agree it was broken. So many people dont know the background of those bass. When that record falls, you can bet there wont be a fisherman out there that wont know, as Paul Harvey says "The rest of the story"

You make some good points. First you will never get me on the live bait debate. I dont use and it if you look in another thread before this one was started you will see that I said any large bass caught on live bait doesnt impress me at all. Not that I think there is anything wrong with using live bait, I just feel an 8 pounder on a lure is harder than a 12 pounder on live bait. About the size of the fish in other lakes. I agree their are some huge fish in California. Makes you wonder why they brought Florida bass to the state. That is still one question that I have never been able to read on the internet an find an answer to. Why did they bring the bass to a state that seemed to already have some big bass? As far as me saying there was something wrong going on...I dont think I ever said that. You have to understand where I am coming from. I dont have a problem in the world with what California is doing. I think it is great. I think for people to be able to go after huge bass is great for everyone. The people fishing and the state itself. I am 100% for them doing what they are doing. Thats one part of it. The part I dont agree with is if a record is caught, I dont think it is the same as the old world record. This is a little long but here is the way I look at it. The top 25 bass ever caught has been re-writen since the 80's. You have to keep in mind that we know of two huge fish caught years ago. One was in 1923 and one in 1932. Now I have no way of going back to look before the 80's what the top 25 bass were. All I can do is look at the list as it is today. In 1973 there was a big fish caught in California. Now if you look at the top 25 biggest bass ever caught, and this goes back 83 years, 19 of the 25 have been caught from 1980 to now and all 19 are from California out of the same lakes. So I have to ask myself, with all the lakes through out this country why would 19 of the 25 biggest bass ever caught come from a hand full of lakes in California within the same area of the state. Well if I were to look to find out what was different, I would come up with the fact that all 19 fish are a Florida strain bass that are offsprings of the original 20,000 brought to California in 1959. Now as I said before I dont know what the sizes were before the list of the 25 at this time. I would almost bet that all of these 19 places werent held by bass from California. So it pretty much tells me that there are huge fish in California and there is one reason for all these 19 to be on the list. All are Florida strain bass and just about all are trout fed. Is there any problem with a state doing this? Not at all. Do I have a probleem with this? Not at all. The only point I have tried to make is that to catch a world record out of one of these lakes, and I will say this really is more for the trout fed bass, to catch a record there should be a note about the bass. The note should state how this fish was able to grow to the size it is. Now we all know they do release the bass. (I have no problem with that) We can all bet because they want the record and you wouldnt want to keep one close. But what it does is sort of throws the top 25 for a loop. I know the 22 pound 4 ounce would never have been caught again, because he ate it. But if you look at the top 25 there is a couple of strange things about it. #2 was 22 pounds 1/2 ounce which was caught 7 days later on the same lake as( #3) 21 pound 12 ounces. (#6) was 21 pounds 1/2 ounce which was caught within 3 days of a year earlier on the same lake and was caught by the same guy that caught #2. (#8 was 19 pounds 14 ounces which was caught one month 4 days before #6 on the same lake. (#20) was 19 pounds 1/2 ounce which was caught 11 months before #20 on the same lake. So from what I have read most bass as an average will gain 1 pound a year. Give or take a few ounces. So we have the same lake with (#24)18 pounds 14 ounces caughtFebruary12,1988 (#20) 19 pounds 1/2 ounce caught January 8, 1989 #8 20 pounds, 14 ounces caught February 4,1990 (#6) 21 pounds 1/2 ounce caught March 9, 1990 (#3) 21 pounds, 12 ounces caught March 5, 1991 (#2) 22 pounds 1/2 ounce caught March 12, 1991 Now based roughly on a pound a year in growth, you have one pound and a year and 2 months between #20 and #6 and one pound between #6 and #2 in one year and 3 days. I'm not saying that it is the same fish but man it looks like it. By the way #6 and #2 were caught by the same guy and #24 and #20 were by the same guy. Now #4 and # 9 are not from the same lake as above this but they are both from the same lake as each other. These are the two you were talking about that they know were the same fish. Both from California, Florida strain, trout fed. The third of these same hand full of lakes has the #23 and #24 largest bass. One was 18 pounds 13 ounces and one was 18 pounds 15 ounces caught 2 months apart. 22 of the 25 largest bass are from California. Only one of the 22 are from a lake not stocked with trout. So the above is why I wonder if it should be a record if caught out of one of these lakes. There is a reason 21 of the top 25 are out of these lakes. Again let me say this is nothing against the guys catching them. That would be tough to do. This is nothing against California and what they do with their fish. This is about 2 fish caught years ago that were huge that were caught in lakes that were never messed with that will probably soon be off the record list by 25 bass caught in lakes in california that stocked bass and fed them trout.

I think you missed the part about the ranger. The ranger didnt say the lake was closed the ranger said they feed their bass more trout than any lake in the country thats why he feels the next record will come from that lake. This thread isnt about anyone being mad your bass are bigger. This is about breaking the record out of those few lakes. I did see that 20 pounder caught out of hodges. I feel had it broken the record, it should have gone to the guy that caught it. One heck of a fish. Why is that lake only open Saturday and Sunday? There is no reason for you to get mad or upset about this thread. I live in Florida. If we had lakes stocked with a California strain of bass and fed trout, I wouldnt think it should set a record either.

I agree Glenn. But you have to admit, it is an interesting thread with no name calling!!! The reason I started the thread was because I have a feeling the record in the next year or so will fall to one of these few lakes. I also have a feeling it is going to be a big debate about the record. For me or against the way I see it, I like to read the different views about it.

I dont know if you have the February issue of Bassmaster but thats where the write up is. It only says that the fish were brought to California in 1959. I believe the bass you are talking about in the 70's were the offspring of those fish. I think you need to read the entire thread about the stocking. There isnt a debate if a stocked bass should count, it is about the way it is being done. I have never read anything about another state doing it the way California did, as far as not only the stocking but also the trout. I dont know of any other lakes in the country that are producing the size fish that these 3, but really two lakes are. Since you live in California and seemed to have followed this, why were Florida bass brought to California in the first place? I know California seems to be a pretty good place to bass fish, even outside this area we are talking about, why did they go through the trouble for this? I have read the rules from IGFA, it will be interesting to see what happens if these questions come up if the record goes down to one of these bass. I dont know if they have ever had to face questions about it.

Castaic Lake is 2nd and 3rd. You are off a little on the facts about the stocked bass. The 20,000 bass from Florida were stocked in the 20 acre Upper Otay Reservoir which was the Fish & Games hatchery. The offspring were then taken and stocked. As far as the trout go all I can do is go by what the ranger at Dixon said: "The lake is going to produce the world record bass, Dayberry said, We feed more trout to these bass than any other lake in the country" I wont debate for a second that it isnt hard to catch one of them. Hats off to anyone that can get a 20+ out of any lake, stocked or not. The only problem I have with it is these bass are offspring of a bass that didnt come from California. Their main food which is allowing them to grow as big as they are isnt even a fish that lived in the lake. As far as them growing up in the most pressured lakes in the country, I dont know about that either. I think if I read it right, only one of the 3 lakes that these big fish are coming out of is open year round 24 hours a day. I dont believe it is one that has come close to the record.

I also keep info on my computer. One other thing I started doing years ago is saving some write ups out of the paper. Our local paper (for the most part isnt very good) on Sunday always has a write up on fishing. I will sometimes cut them out and save them because they usually will mention lakes by name and areas on the lakes and what people are using. On the computer I will track what time of year, water temp, depth and what I used and caught. I also will keep where I was on the lake.

I would be happy to say you just broke the world record if you did that. What you would have done is nothing like what has been done in California. Now if you took that fish to your local pond and fed it trout after trout until it was 24 pounds and then let it go in the lake again and then caught it, I would say you had caught the worlds largest bass*this was a home grown fish released back to a lake and isnt recognized as a world record.

I'm glad to see you read it also and as I thought you said you didnt know what to think. I'm sure you probably read it like me that even though it would be great to see the record beaten you just arent sure this is the way it should go down. The super bass they are thinking about trying out gives me mixed feelings. One the one hand it would be cool to be able to catch large bass pretty easy but on the other hand I'm not sure after a while it would be as fun. A few years ago I went to a river here in Florida where the mangrove snaper had moved in. The river was full of them. We started catching them and had a blast. After about an hour to tell you the truth we moved on down the river because we got bored. To be able to catch a fish on every cast for over an hour after a while just didnt seem to be that big of a deal. We where throwing small bombers and over the hour 9 different times we pulled in the lure where we had a fish on both hooks. Like I said, it was fun for about an hour then just became boring.

Good question. I feel that most lakes and rivers are stocked and I dont have a problem in the world with that. I think any body of water that is stocked with bass and are fed trout, not for that sole purpose, that there should be something that says these were bass from that area. I think there is a difference between fish being stocked in other waters and fish that were brought in for the purpose of them getting big. As I said before, there is a reason this record has stood all these years. There is also a reason that three lakes in the same area have come close to breaking that record. Above there was a comment about them not being in a pond. To be honest, these fish are in a pond. The only difference is a couple of these are huge ponds but they are man made areas that were stocked and closed for years and years then they allowed people to fish them. It isnt a pond that you or I would own but it is a large scale state run pond. You can read my quote above from the Ranger, dont think for a second that they dont know what they are doing. They know they are growing some huge fish with the purpose of breaking the record. Here is what a California Florida strain bass is: In the last twenty years the Florida strain has been introduced in southern California reservoirs and at Clear Lake in northern California. The Florida strain grows at a faster rate and lives longer. Most record fish caught are Florida strain. What is writen above to me wouldnt be a world record. These were fish taken and bred to be a different type of bass. This isnt about putting down anyone that catches one of these because they must be pretty good fisherman. What I still dont understand is that when the record is broken it will be broken by a bass that has been bred to get large. To me, I just dont feel this is the same as some guy going to his own lake and pulling in a record fish that has grown up like 99% of the other bass in this country. Just a side note: Last year there was talk that California was going to close down Dixon lake for two years. One was because of the money it takes to run the man made lake the other reason was to allow the fish to grow without people fishing for them. They feel it would give the bass a better chance to reach much larger weights. I read where they might just do that this year. So I guess if after a couple of years of feeding these bass a steady diet of trout and then allowing some fisherman to go after the record is what it will take for it to be beaten then so be it. I would still look at Perry's bass in 1932 as the real world record. I think maybe a bass boat company, line company, reel company, rod company and lure company should be right there to give these guys their products so they can advertise that the record came from their products.