Wanted to share a pretty awesome event this weekend - had some friends out on my lake fishing - I caught a bass that weight one and a half pounds - not a bad size. As I was reeling her in, I noticed a couple of other bass following her in - that is not all that unusual. But, as I got her to the boat and began to lift her out of the water, out of nowhere comes this huge bass and literally swallows the bass that was on my line - the larger bass swallowed it all the way past the dorsal fin, held on for 2 or 3 seconds, and then let go! I did not believe what I was seeing but my fishing partner saw it all happen too. My guess is the larger bass was in the 7-8 lb range - that was one hungry, aggressive bass! Anyone out there experienced anything similar??

I bet that charged your motor for the rest of the week-end!

Never had that happen, but I did fish a Mexican Lake once that the best place to catch a huge bass was to fish a jig under a school of 8 inchers that are chasing shad in open water. This lake had lots of little bass and lots of big hawgs, but nothing in between.

gw

Tim, Great story. Thanks for sharing.

We had a similar experience here in Central Oregon a few weeks ago. My father was fishing a streamer pattern behind his place on the Fall River (a crystal clear spring creek) when he hooked a small Rainbow Trout. As he brought it in a huge Brown Trout (several pounds) that we had previously nicknamed "Ralph" shot up from the bottom of the stream, took the Rainbow, and broke the line, all in about 2-3 seconds. My dad couldn't stop talking about it for days.

The Rainbow, Brook, and Browns are always stacked up together in this particular hole, and the water is so clear that we can see them finning back and forth, with the Browns lurking at the bottom near a log. This was an excellent example of triggering a predatory response, as Ralph and his buddies are always swimming a few feet below dozens of small Rainbows and brookies. We had never seen them make a move until one of the smaller fish was hooked and started to struggle.

The river is restricted to flyfising w/ barbless hooks and no weights. We have been working on bringing Ralph up for a visit, but no success yet.

P.S. I am currently pondless (hoping to change this), but love the site and enjoy seeing other people's success stories.

Tim, I was reeling in a 1lb. bass one day and saw a large fish strike at it. I immediately unhooked the little fish and threw back in the area. I landed a 10.8 lb bass first cast. She had apparently just laid her eggs or else she would have been close to 12lbs. It's never happened again but I keep hoping it will. So yes,
I believe your story.

I enjoy fly fishing on my lake in south central Texas. It was stocked 2 years ago with Bluegill, Redear, and F1 LMB.
I love to fish for the bluegill with a light weight fly rod and a small topwater fly.
Whenever I cast out my flt line it is not unusual for a big bass to align itself up with the line and wait for the bluegill to strike the topwater fly.
Then the fun part starts the bluegill takes the fly, the bass takes the bluegill , and the fight is on. The bass will almost always hold on until about 7 or 8 feet from the bank and then let go. It sure is fun having a 4 weight fly rod bend over double under the weight of 2 fish. I hav not figered out if the bass are just lazy or smart (maybe both).
So far my largest bluegill has been 9 1/2 inches and close to a pound and my largest bass has been a little over 3 1/2 pounds .
Everything has been catch and release so far but I am now starting to selectivly harvest medium size bluegill and 1 pound bass. Life can be good on a 2 acre lake.

Don Stuart

Tim:
That's a heckuva life-like fishing lure you have devised.
Mark McDonald
Editor, Pond Boss

I'm sure this has happened to others but its a first for me. Was fishing a crank bait the other day. Got a good strike and stuck him. Was realing him in when a felt another good tug. Got it closer to the boat to see two different bass on each of the treble hooks. Both were about two pounds. Lost one right at the boat. The other one sure tasted good.

For Tim K...I love it when a fishery culls itself, don't you?

There may not be a soul out here that believes this story but the person who told me the story was an old man who taught my little brother and I both how to flyfish. Old man Christi always fished for sunfish with a flyrod and he was an absolute master. One three different occasions, I saw him catch more than 150 redear and bluegill while my little brother and I struggled to catch 5 to 10. One day when Christi was unhooking one of his many nice sized-bluegills, a 9.5 lb bass came out of the water and swallowed the fish up to his wrist. It scared him to death but he quickly flipped the bass into his boat and took it home. This was probably 40 years ago before folks released big fish like that. I never had any reason to not believe the story because the old boy was the only fisherman I have ever known who never had to make up a story, he lived hundreds of them. Cool old man, and a helluva fisherman. I miss him a bunch and I hope he knows what an influence he had on my brother and me.