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The big one that got away!!! Lake Austin, TX
I recently went to Austin, TX for a Fri/Sat seminar. I know TX is one of the few places to catch a true monster largemouth so I research the lakes around. My personal best is a 7lber from Ky Lake and I was after something to beat that. After reading around, Lake Austin itself is on the bassmaster top 5 list. It produced many 13+ lbers last year alone so I was fired up and got a guide for Sunday morning as my flight left at 2 pm and I had to make it. Lake Austin is nothing more than a glorified river with docks and multi million dollar homes lining it as it runs right through the city.
We met before daylight and took off. A lot of these docks have submerged green lights on them that the owners leave on and we ran crankbaits through them while still dark and caught a few decent fish. Sun came up and we switched to topwater. The fish pic is the first on topwater. I’m 6’5″ about 285 lbs and that fish went about 5. Later on it happened. Imagine the seen from Jaws where the fish is ten times that size of the boat he eats. Big mama swoops over and inhales my spit n image and the fight was on. The guide actually yelled, “oh my god” when the fish inhaled it as we could see the whole thing. I fought it back to and around the boat. It tried to jump twice but it was literally to fat to even get its head out of the water. I’m fighting it and the guide is laying down trying to net this monster and it gets right to the boat and makes one huge run under the boat and SNAP!!! The line was cut as it went under the boat. Me and the guide just sat down speechless and stared at the water for what seemed like and hour.
We fished for a few more hours and caught good size fish but nothing close. It was the largest fish that I had ever hooked. As we were pulling back in to the ramp and the guide looked over at me and said. “I didn’t want to rub it in earlier, but I’ve caught several fish over 10 lbs and my personal best is 12.5. That fish didn’t go 12 lbs but I’d bet my boat it went over 10 !!! That was a Monster!” The one that got away. I got exactly what I came for!
On a side note, the video is of a juvenile Owl that kept trying to eat my spit n image. He followed us nearly 500 yards down the bank we were fishing and tried at least 15 times to eat it and I had to play keep away so I filmed him once. Later on, I actually did have a kingfisher swoop down and pick up the spit n image before I could even move it. Luckily He dropped it soon after or that would have been a fight.
The guide also told me that before I even booked that the Lake used to be awesome because it had grass and hydrilla all over it but the homeowners complained about the grass around there boat docks so the state dumped 50,000 grass carp into the lake they ate every blade of grass in it and the fish have suffered dramatically from it.
http://vid1381.photobucket.com/albums/ah204/justinard/IMG_3001_zpsog4dioef.mp4
http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/ah204/justinard/IMG_3002_zps6hukrvtn.jpg
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1 Reply
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man thats awesome, im from texas and most of my family lives in austin now so i will have to try that out next visit.
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