They say that records are meant to be broken. But in professional bass fishing, there are a few that are considered almost untouchable.
Rip Nunnery’s Giant Catch
You don’t hear Rip Nunnery, a California fisherman, mentioned in the same breath as Rick Clunn, Kevin VanDam or Roland Martin. Still, what he accomplished in July 1969 will probably never be matched.
Fishing in a B.A.S.S. tournament on Alabama’s Lake Eufaula, he brought in a stringer of bass so heavy that he needed help bringing it to the scales. In the days when a 15-bass daily limit was in place, he weighed in a first-round total of 98 pounds, 15 ounces.
That set a B.A.S.S. record for largest one-day catch. Because B.A.S.S. has gone to a 5-fish daily limit, Nunnery’s record will probably never be tested. But even if the 15-fish limit was returned, it’s hard to imagine anyone breaking Nunnery’s mark.
Do the math. His bass averaged more than 6 pounds that day. Unbelievable.
What’s even more unbelievable is that Nunnery’s partner for the day, Gerald Blanchard, caught 81 pounds 7 ounces. And get this, they caught all their bass out of the same hole, according to an article in Bassmaster Magazine. They used plastic worms to catch their bass.
So, Nunnery coasted to the championship, right? Wrong. He couldn’t duplicate his first-day success and ended up in third place.
That was the only B.A.S.S. national tournament Nunnery ever fished.
Two Bass of a Lifetime
Randy Howell thought he had reached the pinnacle when he caught a 10-pound, 11-ounce largemouth in a Major League Fishing (MLF) Bass Pro Tour event in 2022 in Louisiana. Then he went out the next day and caught one even bigger, 12 pounds, 14 ounces. That ranks as the all-time record for big bass in the Bass Pro Tour, and a two-day accomplishment that probably will never be matched.
“The odds of that happening were unbelievably small,” Howell told me in 2022. “I wish I could say that I figured something out that first day and duplicated it the second day, but that’s not what happened.”
Toad No. 1 came on Caney Lake when Howell cast a Livingston lipless crankbait into a shallow pocket.
“There was nothing special about that area,” he said. “It was probably a pre-spawn fish roaming around, feeding.”
Toad No. 2 came on Bussey Brake Lake when Howell cast a black and blue Yamamoto Senko between two shallow bushes. Despite the two monstrous bass, Howell finished sixth in the tournament.
“It was actually a tough tournament,” Howell said. “The worst cold front that area had seen in years came through, and it really affected the fishing. We couldn’t catch the numbers (of bass).”
Another Bass to Remember
Howell may have set the Bass Pro Tour record, but he couldn’t match the all-time big-bass mark set in B.A.S.S. That record belongs to Mark Tyler, who caught a largemouth weighing 14 pounds, 9 ounces, during the April 1999 B.A.S.S. Western Invitational on the California Delta. He caught his trophy fish when he flipped a jig into heavy cover and felt a giant tug.
Elias’ Record Tournament
One day, the Bassmaster Elite Series or the MLF Bass Pro Tour will have a national tournament on a relatively new lake and it will produce impressive catches. Still, it would be hard to match what Paul Elias did on April 8, 2008, on Falcon Lake in Texas.
He set a B.A.S.S. record for four-day/ 5-bass daily limit tournaments with 20 bass weighing 132 pounds, 8 ounces. But just as impressive, the previous record of 122 pounds, 14 ounces, was broken five times in the tournament before Elias weighed in his catch. This was one of those “perfect-time, perfect-place” tournaments.
Elias, who was known as an off-shore specialist before forward-facing sonar even entered the picture, could do little wrong during the competition. He used deep-running crankbaits — a Mann’s 20+ and a Luhr Jensen Hot Lips — and a Carolina rig with a 12-inch Mann’s plastic worm to work deep structure.
“When you’re beating the bank, you might go along and catch a bass every so often,” he said. “But when you work offshore structure, you can find a school of bass on one spot. I’ve had days when I’ll catch multiple big ones that way. That will change your way of thinking in a hurry.”
Rojas’ Day to Remember
Professional bass fisherman dream of having the type of day Dean Rojas did on Jan. 17, 2001, on Florida’s Lake Toho.
Competing in the B.A.S.S. Florida Top 150 Tournament, he weighed in 45 pounds, 2 ounces, setting a record for the circuit’s heaviest one-day, 5-bass limit.
Imagine catching two bass in the 10-pound range, a 9-pounder, and two others that went 8-2 and 7-3–all in the same day.
It was one of those days where rapidly warming temperatures set off a flurry of bass-spawning activity. Rojas could see the big girls on the beds in shallow water and he methodically picked them off by pitching plastic lizards and creature baits to them. He won the four-day tournament with 20 bass weighing 108 pounds, 12 ounces—at the time, a record for four-day tournaments with a 5-bass daily limit. That record fell, but his one-day mark has withstood the test of time.
Neal’s Smallmouth Dominance
Most heavy bags of bass are made up of giant largemouths. But Michael Neal took a different route when he set records in a MLF Bass Pro Tour event in 2021 in Michigan’s Lake St. Clair.
Neal caught 58 smallmouth bass weighing 168 pounds, 11 ounces and set a record for the circuit’s one-day weight in a championship round. In the Bass Pro Tour, “scoreable” bass are weighed in the boat by an official, then released. Neal won by 76 pounds 2 ounces over his closest rival.
Neal caught most of his fish near the mouth of the Detroit River on Lake Erie. He found a large flat loaded with big smallmouths and he caught them on crankbaits, a vibrating jig and a drop-shot rig.
“It seemed as though the bass would continue to replenish in the area,” Neal said in a MLF press release. “I found that they related to anything different: rocks, depressions, grass patches, anything on the flats. I would spend my time on just these high-percentage areas and not fish other locations.”
