Pennsylvania bass angler Jim Brittenbaugh trailered his 21-foot Stratos bass boat five hours from his home earlier this week to west-central New York’s Cayuga Lake. He went there to practice fish on July 11 for a two-day team bass tournament starting on July 12. There was no way for him to know that while fishing with his buddy he’d land what will likely become the New York state record largemouth bass.
“I launched my boat and tried some spots not far from the boat ramp,” the 38-year old angler tells Outdoor Life. “I was waiting for my good friend [and top fisherman] Dave Ruark, who I was going to meet at the lake about 11 a.m. so we could fish together.”
Fishing alone, Brittenbaugh tried a few spots where he’d caught bass in previous years. He was simply checking spots to in order to locate the best areas to fish in the tournament. He caught and released a four-pound bass and lost another good fish. After meeting Ruark at a boat ramp at 11 a.m, the two anglers ran 10 miles run to a creek mouth area that Brittenbaugh wanted to check but had never fished before.
“I knew that in 2014 Greg Hackney had won a Cayuga Lake tournament near that creek mouth,” Brittenbaugh explains. “We got to the area and started checking it out in 20 feet of water. Using my forward-facing sonar, we eased toward shore and started fishing along a deep coontail weed edge in about 8-feet of water.”
As Brittenbaugh moved the boat closer to the creek mouth around noon, he noticed a submerged point and caught a 6-pound bass off it.
“About five casts later with a Junebug color Senko wacky-rigged worm, I brought the lure over the point, and right at the boat I felt a hit and set the hook,” he says. “It was so close to the boat I was ready to bring the lure up for another cast before the bite.”
Brittenbaugh says the bass dove deep, trying to bore into the grass. But he kept heavy pressure on the fish as his 7-foot spinning rod doubled over. He was worried that his 2/0 TroKar hook, 20-pound braided line, and 12-pound test fluorocarbon leader may not hold the powerful fish.
“I kept rod pressure on it and walked with the rod around the bow of my boat and the trolling motor,” he says. “Then it made a run out from the boat, near the surface and we could see its back. At the end of the run it rolled on its side, and tail-walked at the surface just 15 feet away from us.
“When I saw how big it was my heart stopped. I thought, Oh my God, I don’t know if I can get it in.”
But he kept pressure on the fish, brought it close, and Ruark scooped it up in the net.
Photo by Jim Brittenbaugh
“We were flabbergasted,” says Brittenbaugh. “We’d never seen anything nearly that big. My best bass before that was a 7-pounder from a farm pond. We knew it was at least 10 pounds.”
They put the bass in their live well for five minutes, then got on their phones to look up the current bass record for the state of New York. It stood at 11-pounds, 4-ounces, and was caught in 1987 by John Higbie from Otsego County’s Buckhorn Lake.
They weighed Brittenbaugh’s bass on two different scales they had in the boat. Both scales showed it was over 12 pounds. Believing they had a state-record bass, they phoned the New York Department of Environmental Conservation and arranged to meet some of their personnel at a boat ramp to check the fish.
Three DEC staff met them at the Union Springs boat ramp an hour later. Emily Zollweg-Horan, an aquatic biologist for DEC was in charge, says Brittenbaugh. They excitedly weighed and measured Brittenbaugh’s huge largemouth.
“It officially weighed 12.35 pounds, and was 25 inches long,” says Brittenbaugh. “It’s not yet officially the state record, because the scales they used have to be examined for accuracy, and paperwork for the record has to go through channels at DEC.”
DEC also took scale samples from the bass to age it. They said the bass had completed spawing, so it likely weighed more than that when it was full of roe.
Photo by Jim Brittenbaugh
After DEC’s work, Brittenbaugh and a fishing buddy Lenny Speed put the big bass back into Brittenbaugh’s boat’s livewell, and ran back to the creek mouth where it was caught. They released it there, and Brittenbaugh says he can only hopeful that he’ll catch the fish again during the tournament.
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“I’m still in shock about that bass,” says Brittenbaugh. “What a thrill. I want to have a taxidermist make a replica mount of the fish. It’s the bass of a lifetime – no, the bass of 100 lifetimes.”