There have been lots of fish in my life – big ones, little ones and lots in between. Strangely, the ones that really stand out in the scrapbook of my memories are the ones that got away. Fish that you catch and land are embedded in reality. If that smallmouth measured 21-inches, that’s as big as he’ll ever get. The ones that got away, however, are not limited by a set of scales or a yardstick. In your mind, they continue to grow. Such is the case with a bass I tangled with at Albemarle Lake.
When I first moved to Charlottesville from Lewisburg, I was flabbergasted at the fishing options. There weren’t that many in West Virginia. There was the Greenbrier River and lots of trout streams, but very few lakes and ponds. The limestone soil simply didn’t hold water very well. But in Virginia, there were ponds and lakes everywhere. I asked around for a decent place to fish for bass and Albemarle Lake came highly recommended. When spring arrived, I drove out Garth Road to check it out.
Earlier that year, I read an article in Field and Stream that suggested throwing out rubber or plastic worms with no weight whatsoever. Simply hook the worm through the head, toss it out and let it wiggle its way to the bottom. With no drag, the bait looked alive and bass would strike more readily. I tried it, and it really worked. I got more strikes in an afternoon than I did sometimes in a month.
But.
I had to use 2-pound test line to be able to throw the weightless worm any distance and I had trouble setting the hook, and if I did set the hook, it was often with such force as to snap the line. But I sure had lots of bites.
One morning, my brother Pat had come over to visit, and we went to Albemarle Lake. We parked at the dam, hiked below it to fish on the other side. Soon, I had a strike and managed to set the hook without snapping off. The bass was not happy and easily ripped line off my spool which was set extra light so as not to break. The obviously big fish went towards the shore to my left and I felt sure I would lose him if he went beneath the overhanging limbs. He didn’t. Instead, he made a mighty jump and both Pat and I said, “Holy shit! What a fish.”
The bass raced back and forth as I continued to apply gentle pressure. Afterall, this was only 2-pound test. After several frantic minutes, the fish came right at me and I thought he would jump with just a few yards of line out, so I lowered the rod tip to brace for the leap, which never came. The bass was whipped and he was slowly coming to the top of the water within netting distance. But with the extra slack I gave him, the hook simply fell out of his mouth – right at my feet. We eyed each other briefly, before he gave a swish of his tail and headed for deep water.
I don’t really know how big he was. Pat said it was the biggest bass he had ever seen and it was certainly the largest I had ever hooked up with. Might have been 8-pounds, might have been 10. It was easily in the monster category.
That’s the beauty of a fish that got away. They seem to grow bigger and bigger as the years pass by.
