Bass Has a Lure of Its Own

On a rainy June morning in 1932, a poor farm boy named George Perry decided to forgo plowing for the day to fish with a friend in Montgomery Lake, a muddy oxbow off the Ocmulgee River in southern Georgia.

After an hour of casting with a “wiggle-fish” lure from a handmade boat, the lanky 20-year-old farmer set his hook on fishing immortality. His lure snared something so heavy he assumed he had snagged an underwater root. But as he reeled in, he realized it was a gargantuan fish, the biggest largemouth bass Perry and his friend had ever seen.

“The first thing I thought of was how nice a chunk of meat to take home,” Perry later told a reporter.

But first Perry drove to a nearby post office where the fish tipped the scale at 22 pounds, 4 ounces, breaking the previous world record by more than 2 pounds. Perry’s catch earned him top prize in a Field & Stream fishing contest: $75 worth of outdoor gear.

In the 74 years since, the most talented anglers in the world using the latest gear have scoured the world’s lakes for a bass to surpass Perry’s mark. Some have sacrificed marriages and jobs in their pursuit.

But Perry’s record has been intact for so long, some anglers started to wonder if it could ever be broken. Maybe, some suggested, largemouth bass don’t grow that big anymore.

That kind of thinking ended March 20. Carlsbad casino worker Mac Weakley, 33, reeled in a largemouth bass at Dixon Lake in northern San Diego County that surpassed Perry’s mark by more than 2 pounds. But Weakley had snagged the fish on the side instead of the mouth, and a fishing regulation forced him to return the giant bass to the lake.

Since then, fishermen from as far away as Florida, Texas and Mississippi have swarmed the tiny reservoir’s docks and piers, jostling to be first on the water each morning while television crews and reporters stalked the shores, waiting for someone to yell: “I got it!”

So far, no one has.

Outsiders may find it difficult to understand all the excitement. But to freshwater anglers, landing the world record largemouth bass represents the conquest of one of the most sought-after records in sports, akin to Hank Aaron’s career home run mark or Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game. Whoever hooks that fish will become a fishing legend. And unlike Perry, who died in 1974, the new record holder could probably retire on the income from tackle endorsement deals alone.

So now, the chase is on.

*

Dixon Lake is a 75-acre, deep-water pool, surrounded by chaparral-covered hills in Escondido. On a normal day, families enjoy picnics in the shade of oaks and pine trees while a dozen or so anglers cruise the lake, trolling for trout, bass and bluegill.

But nothing has been normal since March 19, when Weakley and two friends spotted a huge fish off Dixon Lake’s picnic area, where another angler was fishing. Weakley and his pals rented a campsite so they could be the first ones on the water the next day. The following morning -- an overcast Saturday -- they slowly maneuvered their rental boat over a clearing in the shallow water -- the bass’ spawning bed.

At first, the men spotted a small male bass guarding the bed. Then they noticed a massive shadow lurking nearby -- the larger female. They took turns tossing lures at it. After several attempts at getting the female to attack, Weakley reared back and hooked it.

After a two- or three-minute struggle, Weakley hauled the mama fish into the boat. It was so big that after landing it he didn’t have the arm strength to hoist it up for a photo. His pal Mike Winn posed with the fish in the picture that later appeared on fishing websites and sports magazines across the globe. The photo shows Winn struggling to lift a bulbous fish, green as a watermelon with a belly like a cantaloupe and a mouth big enough to swallow a man’s fist.

“It’s just a monster, the biggest bass you’ll ever see” Weakley’s pal Jed Dickerson said later.

They put the fish on a hand-held scale and read the verdict: 25 pounds, 1 ounce. It easily surpassed Perry’s fish, but Weakley couldn’t claim the record. He had snagged the fish near its dorsal fin, instead of in the mouth. State fishing regulations say that a “foul-hooked” fish must be immediately released, which is what Weakley did.

Within hours, word of the catch spread to the four corners of the fishing world.

“We knew it was probably coming sooner or later,” said Tom Mahoney, a tournament bass fisherman and president of the Bay Area Bassmasters in Tampa, Florida. “But to eclipse the record by a pound and a half: That was very surprising.”

For now, that potentially record-setting fish, which many are calling the “beast” and the “Dixon beauty” -- is laying low in Dixon Lake’s murky depths.

“It might not be caught for a couple of years,” a local fisherman said as he scouted the lake’s southern shore. “But by then it might be 27 pounds. Who knows?”

*

Dixon Lake’s green beast is probably 9 or 10 years old, the third- or fourth-generation offspring from the founding bass population that was stocked in the lake in the mid 1970s.

To reach its world-record dimensions, it has no doubt lived on a steady diet of protein-rich trout, stocked regularly by the state Department of Fish and Game.

To have lived so long, the fish is probably brighter than the average bass, local anglers say. During its long life in the lake, it has seen every type of lure and baited hook tossed its way, so it’s not easily fooled. After the spring spawn, big female bass, like the beast, sink to deep waters to find a good hiding spot where they can ambush passing trout, bluegill or crawdads.

It came as no surprise that such a big fish was caught in Southern California, where imported Florida-strain bass grow to immense proportions, feeding on trout, living in clean drinking-water reservoirs and thriving in the region’s long growing season. Nine of the 10 biggest largemouth bass have been caught in Southern California lakes, with two of those top 10 fish coming from Dixon Lake.

Largemouth bass are the fishing world’s favorite quarry because these resilient fish can thrive in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and even golf course water hazards. They are the common man’s fish, pursued with a vengeance across the country by more than 11 million hard-core bass fishermen. And when they are hooked, largemouth bass put up a good fight, squirming and flailing until they exhaust themselves completely.

But not every angler has the patience to pursue such a challenging quarry. In the 74-year history of the world-record pursuit, some record seekers have been caught trying to stuff scrawny bass with cement or lead weights to tip the scales. Others have been accused of fishing at night or grabbing a dead fish and claiming it was caught live -- two cardinal sins of fishing.

The official keeper of the world’s fishing records -- the International Game Fishing Assn. -- tries to quash cheating by requiring record applicants to include photos, the names of witnesses, scale certification records and the signature of the ichthyologist who examined the fish.

The association also reserves the right to hook a record applicant to a polygraph machine.

But such precautions have not chilled the record bass hunt. It is an ever-growing pursuit partly because anyone can hook the prize, even a teenage shore-squatter with a $40 fishing rod and a cup of night crawlers.

“Barry Bonds can break Hank Aaron’s record, but I can’t and you can’t,” said Monte Burke, who chronicled the hunt in his book “Sowbelly; The Obsessive Quest for the World Record Largemouth Bass.” “This record, however, is open to anyone. All you have to do is fish.”

When the record chasers descended on Dixon Lake this spring, the scene was so frenzied that some local anglers boycotted the lake for weeks, grousing that their favorite fishing hole had been turned into a battleground.

“When tons of people show up, I head out of town,” one longtime Dixon Lake fisherman grumbled as he cast a line from one of the piers.

Once word of Weakley’s bass got out, park supervisors had to hire extra workers at the snack bar and at the boat rental dock to handle the 300% increase in business. The phones at the park’s ranger station rang incessantly with calls from reporters and anglers, asking if the news about the fish was true. ESPN camera crews dropped by the lake regularly to cover the chase.

At a bait-and-tackle store about two miles from the lake, fishermen snatched up hundreds of pounds of live bait while the Escondido Chamber of Commerce answered calls from dozens of anglers, seeking updates on the big bass hunt.

“They were asking, ‘Do you mind going over to the lake and seeing how many people are down there?’” chamber executive officer Harvey Mitchell recalled.

As for Weakley, he got so fed up with the ensuing clamor that he stopped talking to reporters, saying the quest for the record had turned into an ugly, greedy pursuit.

*

The crowds at Dixon Lake have since dwindled. Fishermen know that the window of opportunity to catch Weakley’s fish is almost closed.

Bass are most vulnerable during the spring spawning season when they are visible nesting in shallow waters. To protect their eggs, spawning bass will attack almost anything tossed into the nest, including a lure. Once the spawn is over, the bass return to the murky depths, where they bulk up on trout, crawdads and small pan fish. Then the chances of catching a bass drop dramatically.

If the Dixon Lake beast survives to spawn next spring, another onslaught of record-chasing anglers will be waiting.

In Simi Valley, Sean James works as a fishing guide for J&T; Guide Services, where he often hears clients and other anglers talk about catching the world-record bass. James believes it will probably take the skills and patience of a veteran bass hunter to break the record.

But he likes to wonder what would happen if a nobody -- a simple farm boy like Perry -- sets the new mark.

“What if it’s some kid, throwing a hot dog on a hook in some weird place,” he asked. “With so much myth around the record, that would be very ironic. That would be suitable justice.”

Times staff writer Pete Thomas contributed to this report.