How do you catch 19 pounds of largemouth bass on a single cast? Just ask Grady Codd of Fort Worth, Texas, who was fishing Mexico’s famed Lake El Salto last December. Using an Alabama rig, Codd reeled in three huge bass at the same time, and he caught it all on an Instagram video.
“I was on the lake late in the afternoon fishing alone,” Codd tells Outdoor Life. “I know that area of the lake pretty well, and I spotted a huge bunch of birds diving on bait near an island. I ran over there fast, stopped about 100 yards away and eased up to the spot with the [trolling] motor.”
Codd says the large flat was just a few feet deep, but it dropped off sharply to about 20 feet. Wind was blowing onto the flat from the open water of El Salto, which stretches across 25,000 acres in western Mexico near Mazatlán.
“Fish were just bowling up on bait pushed in by the wind,” he says. “Shad were showering and hundreds of sea gulls, pelicans, and cormorants were working the flat over … It was a baitfish blood bath – a real bad place to be if you were a threadfin shad.”
Codd made a couple casts without a strike in deeper water, away from the diving birds, as he eased into the action. Then he casted into the melee.
“I tossed a 5-lure Alabama rig into the area, started a retrieve and — wham — got a hit from a good fish, hooked it, and continued reeling. Then I got another hit, then a third one,” Cobb recalls. “I believe I actually had four fish on, because I felt a fourth hit, and a heavier weight on my line. Then it got lighter again, so I think the fourth fish came off.”
Codd is a professional videographer who works for Pro Bass Adventures, a local fishing camp and guide service on El Salto. He’d been videoing clients at the camp, but after the clients left for home, he decided to go out solo. Naturally, he had his video camera rolling, and he was able to record the remarkable triple.
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As the video shows, Codd briefly tried boat-flipping the three bass and swinging them over the gunnel. But the fish were too heavy, even for the 8-foot heavy-action plug rod and the 20-pound test flurocarbon he was using.
“The only way I could get them in was by grabbing the lure head and lifting into them all into boat.”
All three fish, which Codd kept alive in a net and weighed individually, were heavyweights. One weighed 6 pounds 3 ounces, another weighed 6 pounds 8 ounces, and the biggest weighed 6 pounds 9 ounces — for a grand total of 19 pounds, 4 ounces.
After releasing the bass, Codd cast out again and hooked another triple on the same rig. The three bass were smaller this time, weighing around 7 pounds, 6 pounds, and 2 pounds. The action then slowed down, and he moved to another spot.
“I knew that spot, too, and there were some big fish there,” he says. “I caught and released a 7-pounder, an 8-pounder and a pair of 9-pounders.”
Codd said he’s had many triple-bass catches using an Alabama rig at El Salto. But the 19-pound, 4-ounce stringer he landed on Dec. 15 is his heaviest to date.
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“I know I can catch more pounds in one cast. Maybe even get four or five fish on just one cast, or maybe three that weigh 7, 8, even 9 pounds or more,” he says. “I’m going back to Salto at my first chance, maybe in a month or so, and surely next December.
“The lake has been well known for 20 years, but it’s cycling into something really special right now,” Codd adds. “There are lots of young bass in the 5- to 8-pound range. In a year or two, those fish are going to be giants, lots of bass over 10 pounds.”