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Dad, sons bond over big bass

This fish story won’t be forgotten

By Greg Seubert


Somewhere in Oneida County’s Pier Lake, there’s a largemouth bass with quite a fish story to tell.

Our annual weekly trip to Indian Point Resort wrapped up last week with my 14-year-old son, Kyle, catching his biggest fish ever, an 18-inch largemouth, while fishing with his twin brother, Dylan, and me.

Although there are likely bigger bass in Pier Lake, this one showed up unexpectedly as we fished from a dock for bluegills and black crappies.

“I was fishing with the pole I always use when I fish up north,” Kyle said. “I was about to start casting and I lost my grip on the pole and it fell into the lake. It sank. The only thing that stayed above water was my bobber.”

Losing a pole in the water isn’t a problem. That’s why I brought 10 of them on the trip.

With Kyle armed with a new pole, the three of us went back to chasing panfish.

Until Kyle found out there was something big at the end of his line.

“I started reeling it in and there was a lot of tension on the pole,” he said. “The pole started bending pretty hard. The fish was pulling line out. I started cranking on the reel.

“I thought it was a northern, but it turned out to be a huge 18-inch largemouth,” he said. “I knew it was a fish, but I didn’t know how big it was.”

While the two of us worked on landing the fish before it broke the line, Dylan scrambled to get a stringer out of my tackle box.

Once we had the 3-pound fish on the dock, we noticed it was wrapped in line from another reel.

It turned out to be the line from Kyle’s first pole.

“We were pulling the line in and grabbed my pole and at the end of the my line was a fish, a little bluegill,” Kyle said. “Technically, I caught two fish on a pole that was sunk in the water. After that, I stopped fishing because I was telling everybody about my catch.”

The bass eventually made it back into the lake.

“We put it on a stringer and put it back in the water,” Kyle said. “We wanted to show my family. We took a lot of pictures. We let it go because you can’t really eat bass, they’re not that good. Maybe I can catch him some other time or catch something bigger.”

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