Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations caught a nice one yeste, let her go..how many lbs?

I caught this fish on a dives to 10ft rapala in bass colors. She was full of eggs and was pulling drag on my 8lb line even though I had it pretty darn tight. She pulled me aroud the pona a good bit. She was just under 24" long and I guestimate about 22" girth (was hard to get when alive)..
She was healthy and splashed away fine..My friends having been guessing weight and I just want to hear your guesses.

Nice fish. I would guess that it is at least 8 lbs.

Alan, I'd say 8 - 8 1/4 too. That's a healthy looking fish.
We're neighbors - I live over in Temple about 10-15 miles away.

Wow!!! With that girth?! Possibly nine pounds?? Unreal fish.

I have no personal experience with judging a fish that size. Nice going.

rmedgar,

Nice to meet another neighbor!

that is a beauty! Did you get a replica made?

Alan...nice fish...crankbaits rule!....Based on the resolution of your pic and using the widely accepted pixelation cross reference and comparison chart published by Bill Dance in his ground breaking book "How Big Was She?" that fish is 23.78 inches long and weighs 8.721365 pounds!
edit..By the way I see you're fishing out of a Canoe with your feet stuffed in a croaker sack! THAT'S HOW I ROLL SOMETIMES!!! Also good job of holding that fish horizontal and supporting gut!! Big fish can sustain fatal injuries when held vertically and their innards allowed to sag>

Me either.

Beautiful fish!

I'm struck by the gape of the mouth it's enormous.

Depending upon hair style you could almost fit Sunil's entire head in it's mouth.

First welcome to PB. This may help.

There are a couple of accepted methods. I usually average the 2.

L X L X G / 1000
24 X 24 X 22 = 12.672 lbs

and
L X G X G / 800
24 X 22 X 22 = 14.52 lbs

Avg. = 13.596 lbs

Looks like they changed the methods. See this

http://www.wmi.org/bassfish/articles/T196.htm

Old links

http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=7;t=000401

http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=002464

http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=002868

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.ph...=true#Post24157

I agree that fish looks bigger than eight pounds to me.

But all the fish I catch look bigger to me until I weigh them

Here's the picture from AlanGA:

That fish is sweet. My 8.5 pounder I caught was 23.5 inches long and it did not have eggs. So??? This girl must be at least 9.5 to 10.5 pounds. Looks awesome!!!

Ok,

So not too long ago someone caught a record breaking 14.33 pound fish at one of our local lakes.

Here are some pictures of that fish for reference.

http://www.westernbass.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=65214

In my humble, very non-scientific eye-ball estimate opinion, AlanGA's fish looks to me as if it were easily 10 pounds as a conservative estimate.

I would guess 11 lbs.

Ok so are we going to find out what this sweet fish weighs??? Or is this a keep us hanging kind of deal???

I wanted to get 10 plus opinions before I started telling people my guess!

She was full of eggs and I couldnt bring myself to keeping her, so I let her go and she spashed away in good health.

I had a way to measure lenght and girth, but no scale.

I'm going to call it 10lbs. My first thought was 12lbs, but we all know how they actually fare when put on a scale. so I think its realistic to say its a 10lber.

But, I would love more input and opinions.

Alan All speculation is just that. In hindsight you could have fin clipped her and then perhaps caught her again later this year, with a scale on board. Depending on where those trebles were embedded you might recall a distinctive scar that would help ID her. I will assume that the DT10 you were throwing was at its true running depth when she ate it. This is important information because in your area a 10 foot deep bass is usually at "home"..when they move shallow they might have to move laterally up or down the bank 100 yards or more to find the right male/nest or the food they're looking for. So when you catch a big fish shallow its a little tougher to peg just where "home" might be.Big fish like that will normally claim and occupy an area somewhere between the size of your living room and an area of around 1/4 acre depending on the BOW, if food,cover,depth,oxygen,water temps etc are acceptable. In other words she probably will never be very far from where you caught her that day!! Next time you're there spend a few minutes carefully looking over that area with your sonar, you'll usually notice why she chose that particular spot. Good Luck