It’s a funny thing, but if you’re a fisherman you’re automatically catalogued as someone who finds it difficult to tell the truth.

Well, maybe not the entire truth, though some exaggeration is certainly implied. With every type of personality imaginable fishing, just how far that exaggeration may go is difficult to guess, different fishermen’s conscience being such an elastic thing. Some may blatantly double their catches size and weight without blinking an eye while most stick close to the truth. Experienced anglers can look at a photograph and immediately discern an obvious untruth, we won’t call it a lie, and that angler is unlikely to be believed ever again even if They did catch a big one. Coming it too high never is wise.

Now among my friends there’s a code of ethics. You can’t add too much, you’ll lose your respectability. But, as you’re taught in mathematics, it’s accepted and reasonable to round things off. The 3.1 can be 3, the 3.6 rounded up to 4. It only makes sense. Anyone catching a 19 ¾” inch bass is entitled to make it 20 inches. In fact, you’re expected too. Bragging rights are of some importance naturally. But you can’t make that bass 21 or 22-inches. No, that’s going too far. The same applies to a fish’s weight.

There is a direct relationship between the length of a fish and its weight. If you’re going to stretch things and still remain believable to a degree, just give the weight. A 20-inch largemouth usually weighs about three pounds if it’s healthy. But I’ve caught a very few that weighed four and fewer yet that weighed five. Those heavy weights were very high and fat with bulging, full bellies.

When it comes to fish you’ve lost, the distinction between truth and exaggeration becomes even more problematic. I’ve had smaller fish really clobber my bait and pull with power on the strike, then come in easily only to discover it was much smaller than the strike indicated. Things like that happen. Usually, if you get a glimpse at the fish itself it’s possible to estimate its size. If the fish is boatside your estimate can be very accurate.

In my experience and not counting the Great Lakes, large smallmouth bass are uncommon compared to largemouth. A 20-inch smallmouth is a trophy. But how big can they get? The world record is 11 pounds, 15 ounces. The Lake Erie record is 10.1 pounds and 24-inches long.

I believe much bigger smallmouths exist and these encounters are based on people whose word I respect and trust.

Ed Prentice was a respected angler and my friend. I never knew him to be dishonest or to even exaggerate. He didn’t need to, regularly catching huge trout and lunker muskies. He tied a very large deer hair fly on a long, large single hook with a hammered copper spinner in front. He caught many muskie on those lures and related how a giant smallmouth grabbed this lure in Ashville Bay right beside his boat. He said it was 30 inches long and incredibly strong. The monster towed his boat across the bay and wrapped him up in a sunken tree off Goose Creek. Watching his face, it was easy to tell that losing that bass still hurt 30 years later. He also told me no one believed his story. I do.

My Dad and brother were fishing the Allegheny River near Seneca Junction. Dad was using a Mepps Black Fury spinner. Something grabbed it and from its strength it could only have been a muskie or giant pike. After a long battle where Dad could only hold on, the fish towed them upstream to the rapids. Here the fish surfaced. My brother said it was a huge smallmouth, bigger than any dream, its tail as big as a dinner plate, 28 to 30 inches in length. Then a furious gust of wind struck, the bass shot downstream, using current and wind tearing the hook loose. Dad was sick, he’d just lost a bass of several lifetimes.

Soon after my brother’s fellow rifle team member Dave Ericson’s father hooked the same fish and after a long, prolonged battle the monster escaped. He estimated the fish as 30 inches also. Heavy rains came, the river flooded over its banks and that bass was never heard of again.

My teenage daughter Chrissy was fishing for rock bass at Willow Bay with her UL. I heard her shout for help and ran down. Whatever she had on was so powerful we thought it must be a large carp. The water close to shore was cloudy from the high waves. Finally, she worked the fish close and a large tail broke water. I gasped; it was a smallmouth bass tail some 5-6-inches high. Then the size 10 hooked pulled loose. What a brute that was.

Uncle Leo Hayes and I watched a giant smallmouth under a stump in Sugar Run. It was a big stump and the basses head and tail stuck out either side. That bass was easily 26-inches, possibly bigger.

My brother Gary seems attracted to oversize smallmouth and has caught a 22 and 23-inch smallmouth in the river. Pretty impressive. I caught my heaviest smallmouth last week but I know there are far bigger bass out there. Maybe someday I’ll meet one. Wouldn’t that be thrilling!