I am relatively new to Bass fishing growing up in Alaska there were no bass so I concentrated on the Salmon runs. Since i have been down here i constantly hear talk of which lake the next record will come out of. I have fished the so-cal giant bass lakes and have caught fish in the 7-11lb range and saw larger cruising around. i have no doubt of the trophy potential of these lakes, but they do get fished regularly by a large number of skilled bass fisherman. I have since moved to central california and am fishing a whole new set of waters. one of the areas i fish is a slough with an array of canals, aquaducts and ponds connected to it. Some of these areas recieve little to no fishing preasure and forage(bluegill, catfish, carp, crappie, crawdads, baby strippers, etc.) is plentyfull. I have caught fish out of this area in the 5-10lb range and am more then convinced that there are bigger fish there. My question is besides being underfished, why isn't there more talk of the new record coming out of waters like these?

Most likely because there isn't vitamin "t" :o

Yes i admit trout do help Bass grow faster, but there are many areas that produce big bass that do not contain trout.

yeah,thats true but how many bass in the high teens to twenty lb class do you hear of being caught from places that don't stock the trout?I'm sure it's possible :7
swampy

Remember, not all lakes in Central California have flordida strain bass. Lopez, Margarita, San Antonio, Nacimiento and Cachuma are all predominantly northern strain. Cachuma and Lopez may have some florida strain fish in them, but the only one of those lakes that has produced a fish over 15 is Cachuma.

If you head east to lakes like Isabella, Kaweah, Success, Eastman, and Hensley ... I'm pretty sure they all have florida strain fish and odds consequently go way up for bigger fish. In 2001, Success produced a 19.03lb fish. In 1984 Isabella kicked out fish that were 18lbs 13oz and 18lbs 15oz.

Whether or not the canals you are talking about could produce a huge fish depends on a lot of things but the first thing is florida strain bass. If they aren't' floridas, anything over 14lbs is pretty much impossible.

When you look at the top 25 of all time, there's not much in the way of canals listed, so that's probably why people don't talk about canals producing the world record. Not saying it couldn't happen, anything could happen, just pointing out the realities

http://espn.go.com/outdoors/fishing/s/f_fea_bass_top25list.html

Yes, but how many people fish those same lakes? How publcized are the fish coming out of those lakes? At lake poway in San Diego every 10+ pound Bass that came in got a picture taken after it was weighed in . The picture was then posted up for X # of monthes. I pulled a 10.2lb out of the area I am referring to and besides me and my father in law (who I was fishing with) no one else was within two miles of us. the only picture that I have is one is my album at home.
I am not trying to disclame the big Bass potienal of trout planted lakes I am just saying that I feel areas that don't recieve the preasure are overlooked as trophy bass areas

As i said I am new to bass fishing, and i have no idea what strain is in this area. I do know that the area i fish does produce 10+ lb fish and as I said I have seen several fish that i would place in the 12-15lb range.

One thing to add to this: where I fish at in this location, the biggest Bass are about a 1/2 mile walk from the car....and there is no way to get a boat to that area. If I were to catch a big bass what are the realistic possibility of getting it "officially weighed" without killing the fish?

If you did get the world record, my frank advice would be to kill it and take it to a certified scale. With the never ending 'cry wolf' stories about the world record, people want to see the proof and have it verified.

If you just want a good accurate weight on the fish for your own gratification, there are some things you can do. The cheap method is to buy either the stren or berkley handheld digital scale and then compare how it weighs to objects with known weights. For example, take a 1 gallon bottle of water at the grocery store and weigh it on one of the produce scales (or try it on 3 or 4 of them just to be sure). Then weigh it on your handheld. Weigh it a couple times and zero the scale between each weighing. Then weigh two of the bottles at once. This should give you an idea about how accurate your scale is.

The other option is to be a certifiable handheld. The only two handhelds I'm aware of that can be IGFA certified are the Boga Grip and the Salter Digital Scale. The Boga weighs in 1/2lb increments, so you could potentially lose the WRB if your fish was 22lbs 6oz but the scale read below the 22.5lb gradation, you would be forced to round down. The Salter scale reads in increments of .05 or 1/2oz increments (you can pick). You can buy the Salter on Cabelas, just search for the word 'Salter'. It's $90.

Become an IGFA member, send the scale to the IGFA and get it certified. The certification is good for one year. If you caught a line class or world record fish, you could weigh it on your certified scale and potentially get the record. You'd need an impartial witness, photos of you with the fish and your rod/reel, photos of the length and girth, and thanks to our friends the Trews, you will now have to pass a lie detector test to get the WRB, which quite frankly I think is a great thing.

I think about this kind of stuff, as you can tell, because there's times when Nico and I are out night fishing, often times from shore, and there is no one around for miles. We're fishing 100% legal but what the hell do you do if you get a record fish? You just have to be prepared at all times. Even when I'm shore fishing I have the certified scale, tape measure, digital camera, and cell phone with DFG numbers programmed in.

Good luck chasing those hogs :)

I always carry a camera, and i have a pocket scale, but i am currently looking to upgrade my old scale (it weighs in about 1.5lbs light). Most trophy calibur fish I catch whether Bass, Cats, whatever, I throw back. While I love eating fish the bigger ones are not good eating and i feel they have lived long enough to continue to live. So even a potienal record breaking fish I would have a difficult time justifying it's death, knowing that it would not go to good use. I know a lot of you guys are saying BS....a record breaking Bass anyone would kill if it came down to proving it or just telling a story.

Don't get the wrong impression by my comment about killing the WRB. If I could possibly somehow keep it alive, I would. Here are the scenarios that start to unfold though....

Say you catch a fish on a bed and you weigh it on your certified handheld scale and it registeres 22lbs 9oz. You put the fish in your 100qt cooler livewell to keep it alive and you run to the marina. You take the fish out and weigh it on dry land (an IGFA rule) with your certified scale hanging from a fixed object so the weight is totally accurate. The fish weighs 22lbs 9oz and you have a witness and everything. You think awesome I just got the world record.

Then you put the fish back in the cooler to keep it alive while you wait for DFG to show up so you can get the state record. DFG takes two hours to show up. Meanwhile the fish barfs up a trout in your livewell. Now the fish gets weighed again and it weighs 22lbs 1oz. HMMMM dilemma huh! DFG is gonna say the fish weighed 22lbs 1oz. But you have a photo of the scale reading 22lbs 9oz and impartial witnesses to prove it.

Then the story hits the internet. Then it gets distored 10 different ways like a bad game of telephone. Pretty soon you got controversy city on your hands. Pretty soon it was you who stuffed the trout down its throat. Pretty soon you were using live trout for bait. It sucks, but that's reality. That's why my advice if you get the world record is to kill it immediately unless you are absolutely positive you can get a certified weight with DFG witnesses before the fish loses any weight. If I caught a 24lb fish, dude I'd try to keep it alive and negotiate selling it to Bass Pro Shops so a million people could see her, but I think its a lot more likely someone will get a fish that barely breaks it than a fish that breaks it by 2 or 3 pounds.

Food for thought if you haven't considered all the possibilities :)

I fully understand that senario. People do have a tendency to talk and stories do get badly distorted. And honestly, with all the hype going around about he new world record Bass more then likely I would kill it, but I would just hate to do so, a fish like that I would want to keep alive so that mabye it could be caught again or at least it's jeans stay in it's home waters.