Surprise boo bass

[DonCooksey]

I was catching a few bluegills this week on a local lake to get the feel of my grandfather's old 1949 7' bamboo rod that I inherited recently, when this guy hit my rubber-legged nymph. I had a legitimate bass-weight bamboo rod with me that I used to limited success earlier in the day with top water gurglers for smaller bass, but when that fishing went dead in the afternoon, I wanted to see how this little rod felt with small fish (as it was intended). There were lots of bluegills eagerly hitting the nymphs I was slowly stripping out from the shoreline against a rocky dam. Then this bass came out of nowhere and took most of the line off of my little Hardy Featherweight reel during a couple of deep runs before I could bring him in for a quick photo before releasing. It was not a monster by the lake standards, where the record is over 16 lbs, but at 18" and 3.5 lbs, it felt like a monster on that 4-wt rod. My grandfather would probably not have been too pleased to see the rod used this way, but it held up fine. I'm hooked on cane.

[Scott V]

Nice bass Don, it makes that reel look like a little toy.

[michaeln]

"Monster" is all relative, and on that tackle, this was a monster. Way to go!