It was the third and final day of their father-son fishing trip when Xavier Bradely-Rael and his father, Larry, met their guide at the ramp on Basswood Lake. The pair had traveled there from Nebraska, and they’d already enjoyed two great days of fishing on the Minnesota lake, which lies just south of the Ontario border.
“We were after walleyes and bass, and toward the end of the day I pulled my 14-foot aluminum boat into a deep hole that’s produced fish for me for many years,” Troy Vega, their guide, tells Outdoor Life. “We got into a big school of smallmouths and started catching fish up to 22 inches long.”
Using live sucker minnows and leeches as baits, the anglers caught about a dozen big bass in Vega’s spot.
“About 3 p.m. Xavier hooked a really big bass,” says Vega, an Ely native and eight-year veteran with the Ely Fishing Guide Company. “The fish was strong and fought deep, and we knew it was big. When Xavier brought the fish up beside the boat, I netted it. It was 6 or 6.5 pounds, and I told them we better measure it because it might be a state record.”
Vega had a measuring board on his boat, and they used it to get an accurate length of the fish, which was 22.75 inches. They photographed the smallmouth and made a video of it on the measuring board. After releasing the bass back into the lake, they kept on fishing, boating more bass and walleyes before heading back to Ely in the afternoon.
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As soon as they were home, Xavier submitted the paperwork and photos of his 22.75-inch smallmouth to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources for consideration in the DNR’s fishing records book. The agency maintains a separate category for catch-and-release records, and the DNR certified Xavier’s record in early July.
Vega says he’s glad he brought along his measuring board that day so they could make the record official. It’s a fish he’ll be thinking about for some time.
“I’ve fished that area a few times before, but never caught a bass like that one,” Vega says. “It’s the biggest smallmouth I’ve ever seen, and I’m going to have a replica moutn made of it to put in my home.”
Troy said they were really lucky that day he had brought along his measuring board, and they took the time to check the fish’s length and make photos of it.”
“I had no idea at the time that bass could be a record, but we knew the state had just opened a catch-and-release category for smallmouths, so we measured it and [took] photos,” said Xavier, age 27, who works for Target in Omaha.
“I’ve fished that area a few times before, but never caught a bass like that one. It’s the biggest smallmouth I’ve ever seen, and I’m going to have a replica mount made of it to put in my home.”