Last Friday, I took off work early and loaded the canoe up for an afternoon trip to a small lake in my new favorite local state park. Bass in this park are catch and release only, which is an oddity in my area. I’ve been scouting the lake since last season, catching a few decent bass here and there, but I had spotted several 5+ pound largemouth in the lake. I kept telling my fishing buddy that I would catch something big, and it finally worked out.
I was fishing big streamers on a Steffen 6/7 with a Cortland clear Camo intermediate 7wt line. I first tried a gray and white double deceiver at about 6” in length. After a few follows and short strikes, I switched to a Galloup Bangtail T&A in rust orange, which was just the ticket.
I made a cast in an area with the perfect combination of overhead cover and underwater drop off and saw a big white mouth come out of nowhere to inhale my seemingly tiny 5.5” streamer on the second or third strip.
After this big girl pulled my canoe around the lake a few minutes, I was excited to get the net under her. I was also excited I hadn’t gone any lighter than 1x flouro on my tippet.
Definitely my best largemouth on the fly rod, measuring just over 21” on my Steffen 20” marker (I love the the 16” and 20” markers on Mark’s builds for this type of situation). I figure she was a little over 6 lbs. It’s hard to get a good fish picture by yourself in the canoe, but hopefully these will suffice.