Fire Tiger, Still Hot as Ever!!!

 A New Personal Best

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A new personal best for me...I never thought it would happen to a guy like me in a place like this...

I live in a large Midwest metro area and fish from the bank. (kinda the whole point of the blog) No electronics, no 10x rigs on the deck of a pretty boat all tied up and ready...only a rod and reel and what I can comfortably carry on my back. Until 2014, my personal best Largemouth was a 4# cutie from Kansas caught on a 1/2oz Rat-l-trap in Classic Fire Tiger that I nabbed in my teens. Heck, back then I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't try to read structure or conditions. I threw what looked fun. I picked out lures like the ladies pick out cars..."ooh, that's a pretty blue one!"

Fast-forward 20+ years and I finally decided to actually learn how to somewhat intelligently structure-fish according to conditions and it paid off in spades with a 6 pound beauty on a medium diving sexxy shad. I hadn't ever considered catching lunker Bass in my region. In my mind, that fairy tale was reserved for places like Texas, Florida, and California. I caught a ton of bass in '14 in the 2-5 pound range and loved every minute of it, but the following year would be my first taste of an award-size trophy lunker in the form of an 8.25# toad. 2015 was a wonderful year for this bank-fisherman and catching what everyone told me was a once-in-a-lifetime lunker largemouth in my region was the sweetest icing on the cake. The small public waters that I frequent are busy and pressured. I often wonder how I catch anything at all, but with some persistence and creativity, I've been blessed with some of the greatest days on the water anyone could ask for. 

I can confidently say I've come full circle in a manner of speaking as of just 2 days ago. I was fishing a small public lake that was stirred up and pretty murky from recent rainfall. Visibility was maybe a foot or so (normal, murky, crappy) and the warm evening sun was beginning to leave me with a chill in the air. I had caught a few little ones on a Blueberry Perch Supernatural Knocking Rat-l-trap when disaster struck and I snagged and lost it. Man I was bummed!! Given the fact that the sun was nearly set and the visibility very low, I opted for my old friend the Classic Fire Tiger to cut through the murk. I tied it on and began working my way back to the truck when I thought I snagged again. I mean this hook-up was SOLID!! My snag started moving and fighting and I soon saw the beautiful beast on the end of my line. She made a run towards me and I thought for a split second that she was gone, but my 6.8:1 ratio kept up with her and kept my line tight.

At this point, I wasn't aware of the magnitude of the situation because she had yet to make a wholehearted escape, but when she was 3 feet from the bank, she decided to turn-tail and run. And run...she did!! She stripped line off my reel like the brakes were gone and headed for cover. Seconds seemed like an eternity, but I fought her for maybe another half a minute and reached down to lip her. As I grabbed her jaw, her mouth made my big sausage fingers seem small. I mean...I've got pretty big hands. I generally opt for large grips and I can palm my old Lew Childre's BB-1 LMG original Speed Spool quite comfortably.

Mind you even at this point, I had no idea that this bass would eclipse my 8.25# Largemouth from July of last year. The water was murky, the sun was set, and all I could see was part of the head. When I reached in and started pulling her out of the water, the sheer girth of this toad really shocked me. Fat, fat belly and a big wide back. It all seemed to happen in slow motion at that point, just watching all that fish come out of my little local public fishing hole. She was 9 pounds. 

As I reflected back on the near impossibility of me catching another trophy-sized largemouth from the pressured banks in my region of the USA, I know now that anything is possible and I'm so happy to have caught my new personal best on the same classic bait that fueled my fire as an early teen Angler.