A Gathering Of Eagles, Page 47

A Gathering Of Eagles, Page 47

GETTING BIT BY THE BIG BASS BUG LEADS TO ADVENTURE

I even got the “big bass” bug myself in the early 70s and caught my first 10-pound-plus lunker in 1971, a 12.13 Florida at Lower Otay Lake while fishing with fellow outdoor writer Chuck Garrsion. Since then I’ve become an avid big bass hunter, too, with more than 25 fish over the 10-pound mark, topped by a 13-3 whopper at Lake El Salto in Mexico. I’ve caught big ones over 10 pounds at Lake Jennings, Lake Poway, Lake Hodges, Lake El Capitan, Lake Mission Viejo and Lake Casitas in Southern California. Promoters put the Florida strain in Mexico’s reservoirs and I have caught 23 fish over 10 pounds dur- ing seven trips to El Salto, Aguamilpa and Lake Bacarrac in Mexico from 1998 thru 2008. My wife Anne has also chipped in with 11 bass over 10 pounds at El Salto…and she has the family record at 14 pounds! And what’s even more incredible was one day at Lake El Salto in 2001. I had 5 fish over 10 pounds…they totaled 57.1 pounds for the five, and 100.1 pounds for the 10 biggest. That same day, Anne had her 10 biggest weigh a total of 85 pounds. We all have to give thanks to Orville Ball and the first Florida bass transplants. — Bill Rice

Anne Rice has her hands full with a monster Florida-strain bass.

long as there are trout-stocked bass lakes. Larry Bottroff, former fisheries biologist for the Department of Fish and Game and the city of San Diego before retiring in 2003, believes Southern California still has a great chance to produce a bass bigger than 22 pounds, 4 ounces. He did his master’s thesis at San Diego State on Florida-strain large- mouth bass and then spent more than four decades monitoring this area’s bass.” Bottroff reflected, “San Diego should have owned the world-record bass long ago, most recently when Dixon’s famous Dottie was caught twice, each time weigh- ing more than 22 pounds.”

For Bottroff, who still helps out at bass tournaments by checking and helping revive bass for release, it’s a matter of seeing too many anglers miss opportunities for the record. “Think of how many bass these lakes have turned out over the years that were over 20 pounds, and that’s not counting the number caught illegally at night and never weighed in or recorded,” Bottroff said. “I remember there was a rumor about a 20- pounder poached out of San Vicente that I never saw. Bottroff also remembers hearing of three other bass that were more than 20 pounds that were being preserved around

the same time at local taxidermist shops in the 1970s. And there was one other 20- pound-plus bass that was caught by a noto- rious poacher who tried to peddle the fish as a world record but failed. Much of the Florida bass planting has been done by DFG officials, but the fact remains — throughout the period since the introduction of Florida-strain largemouth bass, there has been a lot of “bucket biology” by fishermen that led to the Florida-strain intergrades taking over almost every other water previously dominated by Northern strain black bass, including farm ponds, sand pits and golf course water hazards.

July 2011 _ SILVER EAGLES 47