Believe it or not the world record largemouth bass belongs to two different anglers on the opposite side of the world. George Perry (Georgia) and Manabu Kurita (Japan) currently own a tie for the biggest bass ever caught.
Perry’s bass was caught out of Montgomery Lake in Georgia back on June 2nd, 1932 and weighed 22lbs and 4oz.
Manabu Kurita caught his largemouth on July 2nd, 2009 and actually weighed 22lbs and 5oz. However, because the bass weighed less than 2 oz more than Perry’s bass, it is considered a tie.
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Back in 1932, in the heat of the Great Depression, Perry and a friend decided to go fishing at Montgomery Lake where they kept a small homemade boat. As they took turns casting the single rod and reel they had brought, Perry noticed a large boil next to a stump in shallow water.
Perry cast at the stump and almost immediately the fish exploded on the lure, “water splashed everywhere,” and he set the hook.
However, when he set the hook, nothing budged and Perry thought he had hung his lure into the stump. This concerned Perry because he thought that he might lose their only lure. Losing the lure would mean an early end to their day of fishing.
Fortunately, then something happened, the stump started to move. As a matter of fact it wasn’t a stump at all, but Perry had hooked the bass that he saw boil just seconds before the cast.
He wrestled the bass to the boat and then lifted it aboard with both hands. Perry knew that he had never seen a largemouth bass that big but he didn’t know just how big it was.
On the way home from fishing the two friends took the bass to a grocery store to show the bass off and to measure the fish (32.5 in length 28.5 inches in girth). After their brief stop there, they took the bass to the post office where they could weigh the beauty on a certified scale. 22lbs 4oz!
Perry was told that Field & Stream had a big fish contest, in which Perry later entered and won $75 worth of outdoor gear.
The bass was cleaned later that day and it fed a family of 6 for two nights straight!
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On July 2nd, 2009 Kurita set out to do some live bait fishing for bass. He caught some bluegills early, that he kept in his livewell, and used them for bait. Fishing next to a bridge piling where he had seen a large bass, Kurita cast a live bluegill towards the piling and waited. Shortly after the bluegill was in the water, Kurita sensed a bite and set the hook.
“The fish didn’t move” and the fight was on. After he had landed the fish he had no idea that it was potentially a world record, but he kept it in his livewell so that he could get a weight on a certified scale.
Later that day he weighed the fish, 22lbs 5oz.
Soon thereafter Kurita was questioned multiple times about the fish and more specifically about his fishing location. The bridge pilings that he was fishing were marked with signs that said “do not stop” so the question became, was this a legal catch.
If it was not a legal catch then the catch would have been all for not.
After the IGFA concluded an investigation which included lie detector tests and working with Japanese authorities, the catch was ruled legal and the tying record went into the books.
Probably considered the most famous bass of all time was a bass named Dottie that lived in Lake Dixon, California. She got her name by the unique black dot that was located just under her gill plate which made her noticeable even from above the surface of the water. She tops the list at number 4 on the all-time biggest bass ever caught.
On March 20th, 2006 she was caught by Mac Weakly while he was sight-fishing for the giant. Unfortunately, Weakly, who was using a white jig to catch her, accidentally foul-hooked the bass in the side of the head. Weakly stated that while fishing for the bass, he felt a “hard thump and he noticed that his white jig had disappeared,” all indications to the set the hook.
However, after he landed her he realized that she was hooked “outside of the mouth” and this would not be considered a leal catch and so he didn’t try to make the record official.
At the time that she was foul-hooked she was full of eggs and Weakly decided to go ahead and weigh her, she weighed and impressive 25 lb and 1 oz and would have shattered the record if it had been an official catch, but unfortunately it was not.
Big bass connoisseurs literally tried to catch Dottie every single year while she was still living but in 2008 she was found dead and the hunt for maybe the biggest bass that ever lived was over.