Catching a new personal best bass is something that everybody hopes for every time they hit the water. You can go out and catch 30 fish in a single outing, but the one you remember (and the one you take pics of and brag about) is the biggest fish of the day. Let’s face it, anybody can catch little fish, but catching the much wiser and more elusive big fish is a completely different story. That being said, this is where patience played its roll in helping Katie land her new personal best, a beautiful 6 pound 15 ounce largemouth bass. First off, when you’re fishing with the 4.5 Texas-Rig Jig you’re not out there trying to catch numbers of fish…you’re out there to catch hogs period.

Combine this bait with the right place and a little patience and you have a recipe for a giant. Katie was working the 4.5 TRJ topped with a ½ tungsten through the branches of a large laydown tree in 12ft of water and was crawling the bait super slowly with painstakingly long pauses. After pausing the bait for just over 2 minutes in one spot, she gives the big TRJ one tiny hop…the hop that happened to be the decision maker for the hog lurking below to engulf the bulky bait crawling around its lair. After a bone jarring hook set, the massive bass immediately wraps itself up in the branches and the true battle begins. Minutes pass as the big fish surges around the same branch completely wrapping itself up….and before we know it, there’s no movement at all. More time passes as Katie keeps pressure on the line with the hopes to feel some sort of movement on the other end. But after a couple  more minutes of absolutely nothing, the adrenaline rush quickly begins to subside as the fear of the worst starts to sets in. At this point, I grab the rod from her, put the tip of the rod down into the water to try to unwrap the line to salvage the bait and tungsten with no luck at all. I then reel down with the rod in the water as far as I could get it and pull back to break the line. With one final hard yank the line breaks the branch free from the tree and to our amazement the giant bass was still on the other end!!! The hog launches 2 feet into the air as I quickly handed the rod back to Katie so she could finish fighting the bass that she had so patiently waited for. Within seconds, the beautiful bass was safely in the boat and an outburst of laughter erupted between the two of us. We all know how good it feels and the excitement that’s involved in catching a personal best fish. But after the grueling ups and downs of this super long drawn out battle, and after thinking all hope was lost, Katie’s says her new personal best felt like a triumph!  And rightfully so!

For all of you that have heard the old saying “Patience is a virtue”…trust me when I say there’s a lot of truth in those words.