Dead River

just an amazing fish, megabass! a 17-7 was just caught in northwest Ga this past week.

Thank you all for the kind words.

I added the details of the story for you guys. Good things can happen when you're unprepared

Tell me about it. If that place was moderated as well as this forum is, I'd still be posting. Its for the best, that place has steadily gone downhill. I'd rather post here

Public, 2" longer length limit, creel limit is half the state reg, managed for balance not trophy

I am 6' 1" 230 lbs. I wear a size 11 shoe which avg for a male. I mention this because unfortunately I did not get measurements. But I did weigh both fish on my brand new boga grip.

Here's the 10 lber

The photos where you can see my shoes are the best reference. These are my 9th and 10th double digit bass respectively. The photos do not do them justice. Both were rotundly fat from head to tail.

12 lber from Georgia So this is how it happened. I figured the water temp would have risen in this location due to its size and depth. Figured I might see a bed. Afterall I worked a fish there the year prior for almost 2.5 hrs. The domino never fell unfortunately. So I located this bed with about a 3 lb buck and two large females.I for one.prefer to.leave the male on the bed and antagonize him.enough to make the female(s) come in for.crowd control. I've seen multiple females on a bed before but never two this large defending it. They obviously both laid in it which is common.so I realize one is slightly larger than the other and target.it primarily. After.what felt like.at least 100 casts she finally clobbered the black and.red.glitter 6"'zoom lizard. The tug of war was amazing, rod.doubled over and she thrashed a couple.of.times. far too heavy to.pull up the bank so.when I lipped her and pulled.her out.of.the waternit.blew my.mind.how.large.she was. Moreover how.much larger than.I had anticipated her to be. Adrenaline has been kicking for.several.mins and im elated. I go to pull my cell phone out and ita not.in.my pocket. I left it on.the charger.in the car.accidentally trying to.make.sure.I had enough.juice in the even that I made.any long.walks. instead of.laying.the fish in.the grass to.be tarred and.feathered by grass clippings.and pine.straw and.ultimately.destroy its slimecoat I walked 50-60 yards to the car and got.my phone. I was exhausted. I.had already weighed the fish on.a boga and it pulled the scale.down to 12. Got.some by standers to.take.some photos. Dunked the fish and.held.her.by hand with the intentions of.taking a release.video and.some.more.selfies. I had a fish gripper via the boga but a mixture of.excitement and.the accumulation.of.several nights of.3'hours sleep.did.not.behoove me. The fish shook my barehand and made a break.for.it. I went.in the water up to my knees and had two.hands on her belly like she was a pig I was chasing in a barnyard.she shook again. And I.had an existential moment.and asked.myself what am I doing knee.deep.in a pond with my dress pants and shoes chasing a bass I already have.4'photos of. Subsequently I caught the smaller remaining female. She weighed 10.25 lbs on first pulldown of the boga.not as long and not as big of a head but an absolute boss. An "over" a fish that has outgrown.its frame in.all senses.the photos I got of her are abysmal. Taken from too far away. But when you are relying.on.bystanders for.memory pieces it.happens. unfortunately, I.didnt measure.the.fish.but in talking to.the.biologist over the location.its probably best that I.didnt put the fish.on.the ground. Now ppl are picking.me.apart because.I.didnt.longarm.the fish. Definitely one.of.the highlights of.my endeavours.

the world record over 8 pounds is from the appalachacola in florida...

the 14 pound largemouth was weighed just not on certified scales

no, he was talking about largemouth. I've called him a couple of times trying to book a trip during the Primo smallmouth the season and we talked fishing in general on Pickwick. I have fished picwick many many times I have family that live in the area and rest assured I know the difference between a small mouth in a large mouth. I would like to see some photographs of these giant smallmouth that you were talking to people nonchalantly throwing back world record fish. You still have not accounted for the 14 plus pounder that was caught in Tennessee waters on Pickwick and was released because the angler did not want to kill it. This fish was posted all over the *** website etc etc

I remember him saying he themes in fish in the 10 to 12 pound range weighed in at tournaments. and of course there was that 14+ pounder that would have been the new Tennessee state record caught a few years ago in Tennessee waters on Pickwick

I live in Georgia, while I wouldn't mind catching a ten pound spotted bass I am more interested in catching a giant largemouth. I think with enough work and time I can catch a teener lm in GA. but I'd love to catch a troutfed 15 lb plus. probably won't happen this year... but i am doing some recon.

I've caught one double digit that I know was the real McCoy without weighing it. A friend and I were fishing the lake pictured in my last post. before we learned to do total length measurements like fisheries biologists did we would measure to the end of the tail (not the fork) but to the longest part of the tail without it being compressed. My buddy caught a 25"x19" pig that weighed 10.37 lbs, a few hours later he had to go back to atl and he was the owner of the scale. an hour after he left I caught a 25 x 19" bass that was bursting at the seams. I took the photos of him with his bass, he is substantially smaller than me, I was alone so I had to do the selfie.... with the measurements the same, even if the fish are shaped differently I have no doubt whatsoever that this fish was over 10 lbs, the only question is which one is bigger? and who's to say I didn't shortchange the girth. my fish came unbuttoned in the net. his fish my fish

amazing fish, there may not be many of them caught there but I bet there are plenty of them there. that's an awefully big river. I had a conversation with Roger Stegall earlier this year and he said they had a lot of big fish weigh in at tournaments.

Fellows, if you could pick one lake in California and one guide to put you on the biggest Largemouth Bass possible, where would you fish and who would you fish with? Off the top of my head an infisherman article about sightfishing bedding giants at mission viejo comes to mind. Please make some suggestions, thx.

sometime back in a discussion with the biologist that had been over the pfa where I caught five of my double digits, I was informed that almost positively all of the giant fish I caught from the pfa would've had to have been f1 hybrids due to the fact that the fx intergrades (native Ga bass aka Montgomery strain) were not old enough to have matured to such size. The farmpond giants toward the end of the photos are fx intergrades, those fish are offspring of a stocking from the 1950s... so some of my captioning describing the crankbait fish from the pfa were wrong. If it hadn't have gone dry Ocmulgee pfa would've become the equivalent of Castaic lagoon east coast style

I don't snag fish. I was fishing a large bedding female, she had lipped it twice and not gotten the hook. pulled the lizard past her tail and she moved, sharp hook accidentally stuck her. I did not mean to do this I wanted the fish to bite and I am confident that she would've bitten. I heard that Mac Weakley deliberately snagged dottie.

that they are, they are one of the most beautiful and most hard fighting if not the of all the black bass.

big lake with a community around it. gotta be a way to put in on the lake.

I didn't see a 7 lber in the thread, your fish looks much bigger. still looks fun. if I was gonna go to mexico I'd have to catch some giant fish though. is there a cheaper way to do baccarac?

in Georgia they are native to the flint and hooch which form the appalachiacola (sp?) after lake Seminole. there is also a well established non-indigenous population in the Ocmulgee and purportedly other rivers in Georgia. Georgia also boasts a non-indigenous smallmouth bass population in the savannah river and also in a small portion of the Chattahoochee which also features spots, shoalies, and lm - crowded huh?

yes they can be caught in skinny water but I assure you that river is quite large. you are just seeing a finger of it there.

they're not a lm bass. they are a shoal bass. native to Georgia, part of Florida and Chattahoochee tributaries in Alabama http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoal_bass