I play guitar for a living. I laid off fishing for the past 35+ years and started back just this past 6 months or so. I logged into this forum and learned so much about bass fishing which I never did when I was younger .

I had a New Years Eve party to play North of Atlanta at a place called Lake Arrowhead. 550 acres with a bunch of beautiful homes around it. Been there since the 70s, and I assume the lake also is about that age. Along with my guitar stuff I put in a couple of rods and headed out to the job this after noon. Got there in plenty of time to set up and then about 6:00 I walk out of the large clubhouse where the party is held and fish a little down at the golf course. Found that the bottom was real grassy with a fine type of grass that just balled up on the Carolina rig I was throwing so I went back to my car and opened up my tackle box and put on a drop shot rig with a black and blue Senko worm about a foot up from the weight. I went back into the clubhouse and walked out the back doors out onto a huge 100ft wide deck that comes off the back of the building which is all glass. There are two levels of the deck each about 20 feet deep. I started casting the drop shot rig from the second deck level that was about 25 feet above the water. I am dressed in my Tuxedo pants and tux shirt with a hooded sweatshirt over that. I am just enjoying the view and not really caring if I get a bite or not when I look at my rod tip and see just a little 'tic". I wait maybe 15 seconds and it does it again. I let it happen a total of 5 times, reel down, point the rod straight down while reeling in and give a good upward hookset. I am real tickled to have a fish on because I have not caught anything in a few weeks. I start to reel in at a modest rate and all of a sudden all I see is just a huge gaping mouth that you could easily put a football into!!!! Then this massive bass breaks the surface and just lays on its side. I am just laughing because I am 25 feet above it and have no way to get to the fish. The rest of my musician buddies are inside the clubhouse setting up their instruments and I can see them through the glass panels on the back of the building. I start to yell and wave and them, but no one sees me until about 3 or 4 minutes goes by and then 3 of them run out the side door onto the deck and when they see this fish they just cannot believe it. I tell one of the guys to walk to the side of the deck on the first level and I start towing the fish around the right side of the deck. I hand him my rod and show him how to keep the spinning reel from letting out line and then I run back to the center of the deck to the stairs that lead from the second level to the first level. I run up the stairs and the run over to get the rod back and look over at what my next move will be and see a set of stairs that leads down to a small boat dock neck to the deck. All four of us head down this winding staircase and I have the rod hanging over the side of the rail trying to keep this fish on and reeling in slack and trying to keep from falling down the steps and my buddies are running down with me watching all this happen. I get down to the boat landing and it is too far off the water to be able to reach the fish and I have my tuxedo on and I can't jump in the water so we all just stand on the landing looking at this huge fish that easily weighs 10 pounds. I look over and see that I can hop off the back of the landing onto a 6 foot piece of ground that goes under the deck. It is all rocks and trash and busted glass and everything you can imagine so I give one of the guys my rod and hop down on the ground and get my rod back from them and consider just dragging the fish up on the bank but I decided that dragging it into all that trash just did not seem to be the best thing to do for the fish so we just checked the fish out some more and I gave him some slack and she just rolled over and the hook popped right out and she slid off.

You should have seen the belly on her. Surely it would have been too early for a large bass to be full of eggs but that is what she looked like. Anyway I wish someone could have captured all this with a video camera as it looked more like a Marx brothers movie and was just hilarious.

Heck of a way to start out the new year. I may never catch another fish like that in my whole life, but having the experience of it is all a fisherman could ever want. I am headed back out again in the morning at a local lake to try again, because I have just learned that you never EVER know what is going to happen on your next cast. If you spend enough time at it no matter if your good or bad, that big moment will eventually come for you.

Happy New Year.

PS. If you go to Google Earth and log in "Lake Arrowhead Waleska Georgia" and hit enter, a pic of the lake comes up. Click on the blue dot on the Southwest side of the lake and pic of the club house will come up and you can see the back deck with the stairs on the right side leading down to a boat dock where a pontoon boat is. That same boat was there.

Great story.

Glad she got away safely.

This is an ***.  Go fishing more.

Thats a big fish lake. Its a shame its private . Its got trout and a few big fish kinda like a California lake. I have seen a couple of fat teen size fish that came out of that lake.

Sounds like a good night