It was July 1st, 2006. The robins started chirping outside the bedroom window at about 4:30 AM. The weather was predicted to be warm and sunny. It seemed like a good time to get up and head for Mason County’s Devereaux Lake.
Fishing solo, I launched the electrically powered blue boat onto Devereaux at about 5:30 AM. It was very foggy, cold and windy on the lake. Lots of steam was rising from the surface water showing that the water temperature was much warmer than the air. Visibility was less than a hundred yards. I had brought a warm shirt and vest but no jacket. It was cold -- And, this was during a warm weather period here in the great northwest.
I fished hard for several hours without a strike. Finally about 9:30 the sun started to break through the fog and warm the air a tad. I approached an old tree down in the water and cast a black jig. I felt that delightful little tap-tap and set the hook. I got a great hook set and brought the bass out from under the tree and had her to the surface. She splashed and thrashed on the surface for a bit and then tried to head back down under the tree.
I had set the drag on my casting reel very tight so she had a tough struggle trying to pull out any line. She was so big and strong however, that she towed boat and all back to the tree and dove down. She managed to tangle and pull free. After quite a struggle, I was able to free my jig and retrieve it. The barb of the hook had a little hunk of bass mouth lining still attached to the barb.
The behemoth largemouth will have a big sore mouth for a couple of days but she really earned her freedom. A tip of the fishing cap to this big beauty --May we meet again. How big was she? Well, they always grow after getting away -- But trying to be somewhat honest, I think she was pushing 6 pounds. On second thought, maybe even bigger.
About a half hour later, I got my second bass strike of the morning. I cast to the edge of some overhanging brush and again the wonderful feeling of a tap-tap. I set the hook but then couldn’t feel the fish. She evidently had charged toward the boat. I thought I had erred in the hook set and she was gone until I saw the line streaking toward some sunken logs. I quickly caught up with this fish and brought her to the boat and jaw landed her. I put her in a cooler of water while I readied the scale and tape measure. This fish was much smaller than the one that got away --Honest. Anyway, she weighed 3 pounds, 10 ounces and was 18 inches long.
I saw several other bass (a couple of them were really lunkers) that wouldn’t bite and did catch a rainbow trout on my floating Rapala but that was the extent of the action in about 6 hours of fishing. Big bass in clear water lakes can be a real challenge. Oh well, hooking two nice bass is a whole lot better that a complete skunk.

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