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It was late afternoon when we checked into one of the riverfront cottages at Sally's Fishing Lodge. Anglin' Sam hustled me into an outboard motorboat, and we went putting out onto the river, jouncing over an obstacle course of submerged logs and stumps. The desolate, swampy beauty of the Withlacoochee was stunning. The shoreline was overhung with massive oaks, fanleafed palmettos and knobby cypress trailing veils of Spanish moss. A bull alligator as big as a battleship slithered off a rubbery bank. A bald eagle stood sentinel atop one of the dead stumps towering out of the weedy black shallows. "Bass country," said Anglin' Sam.
Maybe so. but after three hours we had not had a single bite. Dusk was approaching, but Anglin' Sam, that glazed look in his eye, insisted on "just one more cast." One hour, several snags and no nibbles later, a light rain began to fall. "Just one more cast," said Sam.
Finny Brutes. Next morning Sam hauled me out of bed at 6 o'clock. The mist was just beginning to lift off the water when Sam's rod suddenly arched. I couldn't watch, for at that very instant something else was tugging mightily at my line. Rearing back, I saw a flash of white underbelly, and all at once the fightingest fish I ever saw did a half gainer right in front of me and dove under some lily pads. Several frantic moments later, while Sam shouted instructions and I tried to keep from falling out of the boat, we both pulled in nearly identical 3-lb. largemouths. There wasn't time to savor the moment; immediately those finny brutes hit again and again in what the locals call the "Withlacoochee magic hour." When it was all over we had netted 15 bass, each between 1 ½ and 4 Ibs.
That evening, the fishermen at Sally's camp gathered under the oak trees to do what for them is the next best thing to bass fishing—talking about bass fishing. Some got into long discussions about whether the Nip-I-Diddee plug or the Heddon Torpedo works best on a cloudy day. Others, conspiring like witch doctors, argued whether lures rubbed with catfish-bladder oil or a potion made of anise, strawberry soda pop and cheap bourbon is the most likely to attract the big "kegmouths." George Gregory, a stagehand from Columbus, Ohio, told of his long-running battle with Ol' Geronimo. "He sits out there in a ring of cypress," he said, "just defying you to take him. The first time I tangled with him he snapped my rod in two. So then I went after him with a deep-sea rod and 40-lb. test line. Wham! He hit my shiner, dove under the boat and straightened the hook flat out. He's a world record, but nobody will ever catch him."