What's the biggest bass ever caught in a tournament? The biggest one I know of was caught at Berryessa on March 11, 2000. The fish was caught by the team of Vince Mussat and Gary Mussat and weighed 16.75lbs. Here's the results page from that tournament:

http://www.wonbass.com/archives/2000/team/northern_2000/vineyard99_00/4_berryessa.html

Has there ever been a bigger one?

There was a 17+ in I beleive an ABA tourney at Castaic back in the day.

There was a 17+ caught in an ABA at Pedro a few years ago also...I think Troy Wells caught it.

Jake J

http://calfishing.com/gallery/v/members/jakej/

Interesting. You'd think someone would kind of keep track. It's too bad more tourney orgs don't have archived results online to look back for stuff like that. You know somewhere in some TD's garage is a wealth of old info from tourneys. I'd love to hear more info on either of those fish or other big fish caught in tournaments in the past.

I know an 18 something came in a tournament in Texas at Lake Fork one year. I heard about it while at the Big Bass Splash at Sam Rayburn a couple years back. I guess the guy was disqualified for his catch becasue his wife netted the fish and she was not signed up for the tourney. The fish ended up in Jimmy Houstons private pond on his property in Oklahoma

I tried to find the Pedro fish on the ABA website but they don't have archived results older than 2004.

Jake J

http://calfishing.com/gallery/v/members/jakej/

I was in a tourney at McLure about 3-4 years ago and saw a 17.5 weighed in. The downside was...it was found floating with a big wound on one side(like hit by a prop).

The funny part...everybody had about 10-15lb limits and wasn't even going to weigh-in when they heard about this one fish. That fish was HUGE!

Hey my buddies were right next to that guy in the berryessa tourny when he caught that 16. I think he said the guy was dropshotting small plastics. Go figure.

Ryan Thoni


If people concentrated on the important things in life there would be a shortage of fishing poles.
~Doug Larson

I'm not sure about the biggest ever caught in a tournament in this US but I believe there was 19.?? caught during a tournament in Japan about 3 or 4 years ago. I believe it was also the biggest ever bass ever caught in Japan. If I remember correctly the lucky angler caught her drop shotting.

JerryG