NewsOk.com reported Saturday that the state record for smallmouth bass had been broken on Lake Lawtonka this weekend. We confirmed with the angler Ryan Wasser of Pocasset, Okla., that his 8 pound, 7 ounce bass had been certified as the record and was taken to the nearby Bass Pro Shops to hold the and keep it alive for all the public to see the record fish. The bass was caught on a shaky head jighead and finesse worm. It measured 23 1/8 inches long and its girth was 18 inches.
This record breaks the 6-year-old state record of 8 pounds, 3 ounces caught March 4, 2006 on Lake Eufaula by Steve McLarty of Broken Arrow, Okla.
This record comes just a week after Benny Williams Jr broke the largemouth bass record with a 14-pound, 12.3-ounce giant out of Cedar Lake.
Wasser was fishing with spinning gear with a 7-foot medium heavy power rod and 10-pound test line. The fish bit a 1/4-ounce shaky head with a Zoom Trick Worm in less than 5 feet of water. The fight lasted about 60-90 seconds before Wasser’s mother netted the fish.
“The fish didn’t look like it was spawning,” Wasser said. “I was fishing with my mom and 6-year-old son. She fought to the end. My mom netted the fish. It was just a wonderful experience that cannot be described in words, but it will definitely never be forgotten.”
That’s a once-in-a-lifetime fish, and those moments can only be lived. Congratulations on an amazing fish Ryan!
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COO and Publisher, Jason Sealock came to Wired2fish shortly after inception in January of 2010. Prior to that he was the Editor-in-Chief of FLW Outdoors Magazines. He worked up from Associate Editor to Photo Editor and finally Editor in Chief of three magazines FLW Bass, FLW Walleye and FLW Saltwater. Now he sets the content direction for Wired2fish while also working directly with programmers, consultants and industry partners.
Sealock has been an avid angler for the better part of 40 years and has been writing and shooting fishing and outdoors content for more than 25 years. He is an expert with fishing electronics and technologies and an accomplished angler, photographer, writer and editor. He has taught a lot of people to find fish with their electronics and has been instrumental in teaching these technologies to the masses. He's also the industry authority on new fishing tackle and has personally reviewed more than 10,000 products in his tenure.
He has a 30-year background in information technologies and was a certified engineer for a time in Microsoft, Novell, Cisco, and HP.
He mostly fishes for bass and panfish around the house. He has, however, caught fish in 42 of the 50 states in the US as well as Costa Rica, Mexico, and Canada and hopes to soon add Finland, Japan, Africa and Australia to his list.