Jed Dickerson made his name in fishing more than 20 years ago by chasing a legendary potential world-record bass nicknamed “Dottie” on Dixon Lake near San Diego. On March 25, Dickerson, 52, was after big spawning bass on the tiny, 35-acre Lake Poway. The small Southern California reservoir is widely known for harboring heavyweight largemouths, and he was looking for bedding bigmouths that morning.
“Soon after daylight, I found a great bass on a bed and tried catching her,” said the Carlsbad, California, fisherman. “I thought she’d go 12 pounds, and I worked to catch her for an hour. She finally short-hit my swimbait a couple of times, but I didn’t hook her, and she just swam off the bed and disappeared. I went looking for another fish.”
Poway is a small San Diego recreational reservoir, and Dickerson was in a rental boat. After his miscue on the first big spawner, he found another heavyweight largemouth nesting in weeds in 6 feet of clear water near a deep drop-off to 15 feet.
“I thought she was a giant, maybe 18 pounds, so I was careful and slow, trying not to spook her,” he told Wired2fish by phone while on vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. “She was cautious, and so was I, because I knew she’d be a new lake record.”
Dickerson stayed well away from the bass and tried casting to it from several different boat positions — first from deep water to shallow, then from a different shallow-water angle.
He switched lures from a jig to a weedless-rigged, 8-inch-long Mission Fish swimbait in trout color. It took a few tosses to get the swimbait to ease through the weeds just right and then toward the bass. But after a couple of casts, Dickerson said, the fish got mad and rushed his lure as it came through the weeds — and took it.
The fish came up but didn’t jump, and Dickerson put pressure on her quickly to get her to the net. Using a Loomis rod, a Shimano Calcutta 400 reel, and 20-pound-test P-Line, he had the bass near the boat in short order.
“I had my net out and worked the bass toward it, but she jumped over the net,” Dickerson said. “I thought for a second I’d lose her, but I got her turned and then into the net. I knew right away she wouldn’t weigh 18 pounds because she was too short. But I figured she’d at least beat the lake record.”
Dickerson called the lake’s concession headquarters and told them he caught a bass he believed was a new lake record. He didn’t want to drag the fish back to the dock to weigh it, hoping to avoid stressing it so he could release it. A man from the concession took a boat out to Dickerson, looked at the bass and immediately knew it was likely a record for Poway. He returned to the dock and sent rangers back out to officially weigh and measure the catch.
Dickerson kept the bass safely in the water on a stringer until lake rangers Kyle and Zack arrived.
“She weighed 14 pounds, 8 ounces, with a 26-inch length and a 26-inch girth,” Dickerson said. “She set a lake record, and she’d have weighed much more had she been a bit longer.”
Dickerson said that when he caught Dottie on May 31, 2003, from Dixon Lake, the bass was 28.25 inches long, with a 26.5-inch girth. Dottie weighed 21 pounds, 11 ounces, and was released.
Dickerson said he won’t have a replica mount made of his 14.5-pound record bass from Poway.
“I’ve already got a replica mount of Dottie that’s hanging in a friend of mine’s business, and I can go see her anytime I like,” he said.
