So there I was fly fishing a Pierce County lake near the end of March a couple years ago. It was a pretty decent day weather wise and I was circling the lake, casting an olive wooly bugger into shore and stripping it back in when one of the panfish I was trying to catch turned out to be this monster. Let's just call it one of the bigger surprises of my fishing career. I won't soon forget having to balance keeping pressure on her (with 8' test leader) and keeping her away from the dock she kept trying to dart under. Man, that was the fight of my life. I didn't have a scale at the time but I took some measurements and later calculated her at 6.5 lbs, a personal best.
I'm going for an 8 lber. this year. Hey, you never know...
Might as well show my personal best smallmouth while I'm at it. Ok, so I might be long-arming it a little.
This one tipped the scales at 4.7 lbs., caught on a spinnerbait. Lake Washington, not a secret fishery by any means.
