My Biggest Largemouth Bass Is My Worst Moment as a Content Creator, but a Good Story

The fishing gods gave me lemons and I made lemonade, turning my bad footage into an epic vintage fishing salute.

This 7lb., 4oz. beast is the biggest largemouth bass I've seen in the state of Wisconsin. How is this not the best video footage I ever shot? / Kurt Mazurek

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” -Charles Dickens

It was May 7th, just a couple days after bass season opened for that year in northern Wisconsin. The beautiful late spring weather had me rushing home from work to spend the last couple hours of daylight on my local lake. This lake was fairly well known for its smallmouth bass population, but in the years prior I had discovered a small, but stout population of largemouth.

Based on the time of year, water temps and current weather conditions, I had a feeling the bass would be sniffing around in the shallow end of the lake, scouting out prime spawning locations. I decided to join them.

Slowly and stealthily, I eased my way down a long edge of cattails, pitching a 1/2-ounce, black and blue jig to the base of the reeds. It had been about 30-minutes without any takers, but after the brutally long Wisconsin winter and off-limits bass period, I was just enjoying standing on the front deck of my boat knowing the possibility of a bite existed.

Just ahead, I spotted a log, a single log, about ten-feet-long, stuck in the shallow water mud in front of the reeds. I turned my trolling motor slightly to swing away from the cattails and around that log. As I came into position, I made a short pitch parallel to the cover and began hopping my jig back to the boat. Without any indication of a bite, I realized my line was moving steadily away from the log.

I set the hook hard and knew it felt like a good one. In the ultra shallow water, the fight was all at the surface, letting me confirm pretty quickly this was an extra good one.

When I scooped her into the net, it didn’t seem real. I didn’t need to measure it or weigh it to know for sure this was the biggest largemouth I had ever seen in Wisconsin. And, as a guy who had spent the past couple years creating fishing videos for his YouTube channel, I was mad at myself for not having a camera rolling. But, on the bright side, I did have my camera equipment with me. I put the giant in the live well and set up a tripod, my camera and a microphone. At least I’ll be able to get some nice footage of this trophy along with the epic live release.

For the record, she was exactly 22” long and weighed 7lbs., 4oz. I had caught a good number of Wisconsin five-somethings, but I don’t think I had ever caught one over six pounds until that day.

As an angler growing up in the upper midwest, this is the bass I had imagined my whole life. / Kurt Mazurek

As I rolled through the garage door that evening, all I could think about was cutting that video together and posting my best YouTube video ever. I pulled my chair up to my desk, put my headphones on, and clicked the file to play it. That’s weird, I thought to myself. Click, click, click on the volume key. I jiggled cables. I clicked again. Silence. I knew pretty quickly, but I wouldn’t admit it to myself for several minutes. The microphone I attached to the camera had dead batteries and in the excitement of the moment, I hadn’t stopped to check. I had caught a once in a lifetime fish and recorded a silent movie. I was sick to my stomach.

After a day of moping and feeling sorry for myself, re-watching my silent footage again and again, I had an idea, an inspiration really. I thought about my first fishing heroes, Al and Ron Lindner, the founders of In-Fisherman and true pioneers of some of the first, legitimate, fishing videos I had ever seen. Early on, their fishing footage didn’t have audio, so they would record voice-overs back in the studio to describe the action.

They say, "never meet your heroes." Fortunately, I can assure you that doesn't apply to Al Lindner. / Sam Wilson

And so, it was decided. I would do my best, worst impersonation of my idol in an effort to salvage my sorry video. If you want to take a look, I’ll post the video here. If you've ever seen those old In-Fisherman videos from the late-1970s to the early 1980s, then you know what I was going for. Even though it is undeniably silly, I mean zero disrespect to In-Fisherman. Anyone who knows me personally understands that this video is genuinely an homage and a thank you to the Lindner’s and the entire original crew at In-Fisherman. I owe so much of the fisherman I am today to those videos and their lessons.

THIS IS THE VIDEO I MADE TO DOCUMENT MY BIG BASS AND HONOR AL LINDNER