I wont say where, so don't ask. I didn't have a scale or camera but the length was 24.5" and the girth was 19". What's the formula for weight? She looked like she had swallowed a small football.
When I got to the lake after work last night the sun was behind the hills but still was giving plenty of light. I put on the Monster sized lure I just finished making over the weekend and on the 1st cast WHAM!.... I slammed it into the mud and broke off the bill. x( That kind of bummed me out. Well, after that I decided to put on my other monster bait. On my first cast with it I had a huge follower come all the way to the bluff bank, then just fade out. I decided I'd let her sit for a while and try for her with another lure. I moved about 100 yards and threw the monster bait again. It was followed in by another large fish which was joined by 3 smaller but still respectable fish as I twitched the lure in an effort to get them to hit it at the bank. They were mildly interested and would come closer while I was twitching it but wouldn't hit it. I tried a few more casts with it and got progressively less interest. Next I tried throwing a Castaic Swimbait in Golden Shiner. This got more interest, but still didn't get hit and was out of the strike zone way too fast. I finally decided I needed something different than what I had so I went back to my car in search of my Lucky Craft Pointer SP. I couldn't find it because it was in my fanny pack that I left at Joey's house after our last Sturgeon/Striper trip. I looked at the rest of the stuff I had and was almost despondent as I grabbed a few lures I had little confidence in.
Then I something happened that just seemed right. It was a jig that I've never caught fish on before that fell out of the box and landed on a pack of Powerbait brush hogs in the same pumpkinseed color. Next to them was some Powerbait jelly in the orange color. BINGO! I rigged it up, smeared some jelly on the underside of the jig which made it look like an orange bellied green craw and went back to the last spot.
On my first cast I hopped and twitched it along the bottom and up the side of the bank until it was resting on a spot about a foot down from the lip. I could see just the backs and tails of 3 Bass in the 4-6# range looking at the bait from about 18" from where I thought the jig was. All of a sudden they just decided to leave in a little bit of a hurry and I thought they got spooked.
Well they got spooked alright, but not by me! I gave the jig just the tiniest twitch to try to get them to come back and as they sped away I felt a sharp but light THUNK! HUH? What? I realized what happened as I automatically set the hook as hard as I could and all that happened was I burried the line a good 5" into the mud without moving the rod tip more than a few inches. Then the fish took off carving a chunk of mud off the bank that was bigger than a regulation football. Thank God I was using fresh 30#. The fish made an immediate open mouth jump and I pulled her onto the mud while she was still in the air. The fight was over before it ever began. I was still on my knees and had to get up to go get her and unhook her. She flopped around once before I grabbed her. I measured her length and girth and gently slipped her back into the water without getting to close to the edge. I went to the area where I saw the 1st fish and fished for about an hour and it was getting too dark to function so I called it quits.

Tight lines,
Wade