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Just One More. Two days later, when I pulled Anglin' Sam out of bed at 5 a.m., he remarked that I had a funny glazed look. "Bass on the brain," he called it. The odd smell in the air—a combination of pork rind, outboard motor oil, anise and fish scales—he called "essence of largemouth." That afternoon, while twitching purple-plastic worms off the bottom, I had a strike that seemed to turn the boat around. When I set the hook, it felt like there was an anvil on the other end. Diving and circling the boat, the enormous thing finally came boiling out of the water. Then it tore off for a weed bed and snapped the 20-lb. test line like a kite string. That evening under the oaks I told of my adventure with a "lunker as big as a beer barrel in this special hole in the backwaters." "Where's the hole?" one fisherman asked. "Where?" I just smiled.
Next morning, while Anglin' Sam packed his gear for the jet trip back to civilization, I strolled down to the dock to take a few practice casts. On the first toss a bass picked off my Rapala CD-115 in midair. The largemouth weighed just under 5 Ibs., my biggest take of the weekend. I kept casting, oblivious to pleadings that we had to go. "Just one more cast," I said. "Just one more."
-The world-record largemouth was caught at Montgomery Lake, Ga., by George Perry in 1932. Its weight: 22 Ibs. 4 oz.