All work and no fishing can wear an angler down. So, when Daniel Caricaburu-Lundin had a chance to spend some quiet time on a little lake, his wife Krystle pressed him into going.
“My wife was going out of town, and she knew I needed a break from work, so she convinced me to go,” Caricaburu-Lundin told Wired2fish. “I hadn’t been in so long, my gear was scattered. But I grabbed some stuff and headed to a pond where I’d seen a huge bass, but it wouldn’t hit when I tried for it some weeks previously.”
Caricaburu-Lundin says the ponds he fishes in Northwest Washington’s Snohomish County just north of Seattle have northern-strain largemouths that usually top at about 7 pounds. But he targeted one pond where he’d previously seen a much larger bass, but it wouldn’t hit lures he cast to it.
“It was during the day when I saw that bass, and big fish are a little shy of taking big swim baits in bright sunshine,” said Caricaburu-Lundin, age 39, and owner of Click-Bait Customs, a swim bait lure company in Everett, Washington. “I knew if there was a chance of catching that bass it would be at night.”
So about dusk on July 22, Caricaburu-Lundin launched his kayak into the pond where he’d seen a huge bass.
“I cast a big lure of my design, and started what I call the ‘swim bait grind,’” he explained. “The lures sink slowly, and the water was deep, about 12 feet. So, I made long casts, waited 45 seconds to get the lure deep, then started retrieving.”
Caricaburu-Lundin says big swim baits have a flashing, swimming action with big, wide movements as they’re retrieved to the surface. Casting and retrieving that way is the ticket to big bass, he says, and he fished that way in the pond that night for four hours before he got a strike.
“I’d started about 7, but never had anything until about 11 p.m.,” he said. “The fish was hanging about 5 feet from the surface when it hit, and I knew it was a giant. I’ve caught lots of big bass, including a 13-pounder in Texas. But I was surprised by the weight of the bass that night.
“It fought deep and dogged, and I could feel its head shaking. I kept my 8-foot rod tip buried underwater beside my kayak trying to keep the bass down and not jump, which can toss my lure free.”
His swim bait has two large treble hooks, and he used heavy baitcasting tackle with 20-pound test fluorocarbon line.
“It’s heavy gear to get big fish boated, so they can be released quickly,” Daniel said. “But this bass was a tough one, taking me about 90 seconds to get it close to my kayak.”
Because he’d not been fishing recently he was a little out of angling sync. Daniel says he didn’t have a lot of the usual gear he brings for big bass catching.
“I’d left my landing net at home, and I didn’t have a good flashlight to help land any fish I caught,” he says. “When I got the bass alongside my kayak, all I had was a headlamp and my phone camera to show the bass and get a few blurry pictures. Handling the fish was a little shaky too, because of the twin treble hooks.”
He eventually got the fish in hand, weighed it on a small scale that tallied 9 pounds, 13 ounces. Washington State’s record for largemouth bass is a 12.53 pound fish caught by Bill Evans in Lake Bosworth, Snohomish County in 2016, making a 10-pound class fish particularly noteworthy. A 10-pound class largemouth bass is a treasure anywhere, especially outside Dixie.
“That night was really something,” Caricaburu-Lundin says. “I wouldn’t have gone fishing unless Krystal pressed me. And while I was fishing I got a call from an old Navy buddy Mike Johnson in Kalispell, Montana. He encouraged me to keep fishing that night, and I’m sure glad I did.
“I’m a trained taxidermist, and I think I’ll make a replica mount of that bass. It’s not every day I catch a northern largemouth of almost 10 pounds.”
