Barring the angling equivalent of a meteor strike, June 2 will mark the 75th anniversary of the most remarkable record in the book.
On that day in 1932, a dirt-poor farmer named George Washington Perry landed a 22-pound, 4-ounce largemouth bass from a nondescript Georgia backwater called Montgomery Lake while fishing for food at the peak of the Great Depression.
Despite the determined efforts of the nation’s best anglers and, often, outright chicanery by others, the record has endured.
“As this record gets close to its 75th year, it’s like it has this force field around it,” said Monte Burke, who is in better position than most to know. A writer for Forbes Magazine, Burke in his 2006 book, “Sowbelly: The Obsessive Quest for the World Record Largemouth Bass,” detailed the various machinations that have made up the chase for what breathless publications have titled the “million dollar bass.”
Over several months, Burke interviewed a checkered lineup of eccentrics who in some cases had sacrificed house and home in an often manic pursuit.
“It has withstood numerous close calls and some outright fabrications,” said Burke, whose highly entertaining book from Dutton now is available in paperback. “It’s an amazing record.”
The close calls all have come from lakes in California, most notably Bob Crupi’s 22-pound, 1/2-ounce monster in 1991 and two later unofficial catches that very likely would have smashed the mark.
A man named Paul Duclos landed and released a fish in 1997 that calculated at 24 pounds on a bathroom scale. Last year, Mac Weakley famously foul-hooked a 25-pound, 1-ounce fish that he declined to submit for a record.
Burke believes the Duclos fish was real and salutes Weakley for his decision to release his prize, leaving the record intact.
“There’s no doubt in my mind it’s the most hallowed record in all of fishing,” said Burke, who compares the bass scenario in certain ways to Barry Bonds’ approach to Hank Aaron’s mark for home runs – accurate to the point of purists’ charges of artificiality.
The mere fact that the record undoubtedly will come from a Southern California impoundment where transplanted Florida-strain bass grow fat on stocked rainbow trout suggests a steroidal aspect to it all.
A most profound difference, perhaps the element that makes the bass record so compelling, is that almost anyone might claim it.
“The single thing that drove all these characters crazy is that, after all their time, money and wasted relationships, a 10-year-old girl on her first fishing trip could break the record,” Burke said.
To illustrate the continued public fascination with the bass record, Denver- area resident Kirk Deeter last week donned scuba gear and joined two prominent Southern California questers to plumb the depths of local lakes while preparing an article for Field & Stream magazine.
“The thing that humbled me is that the lures in their bait boxes looked like the trout that made a great day on the river for my grandfather,” Deeter said. “It’s kinda scary, actually.”
Most likely, the record will endure past the 75-year mark. Virtually all the close calls have come during the month of March, when giant prespawn females still carry their burden of eggs. But, Burke believes, it ultimately will fall.
“The beauty of it is, once it’s broken, the pursuit won’t stop. Others will continue chasing it.”
But that subsequent record never will have the impact of the next one. Seventy-five years of mystique and history make that so.
