15-Pound, 13-Ounce Bass From Lamar County!

Middle Georgia College student Bryan McBride couldn’t wait to get home for Christmas Break. He was thinking about bass fishing at a lake in nearby Lamar County, where he had caught two bass weighing over 11 pounds in September, 1997. Bryan was ready to tangle with a big one again.

This 15-lb., 13-oz. giant was caught December 10, 1998 in a 15-acre Lamar County lake. Bryan McBride, of Griffin, was fishing with a live shiner when the huge bass hit.

On Thursday, December 10, 1998, Bryan landed a 15-lb., 13-oz. largemouth while fishing with a shiner he had netted in the lake. The fish put up a hard fight on the Daiwa baitcasting outfit loaded with 14-lb. Fireline. The shiner was rigged on a 3/0 Kahle hook and was fished in water about 14 feet deep.

“When it came to the top, its mouth looked as big as the two 11-pounders put together,” Bryan said. “It about pulled me in when I set the hook, and I was really afraid I would lose it,” he added.

The bass was taken to two grocery stores in Barnesville and weighed on certified scales, with several witnesses present. Bryan had the huge bass frozen and ready for the taxidermist within a couple of hours after catching it.

The lake Bryan fishes produces lots of huge bass. Bryan says he has released a lot of 8-pounders and four or five that weighed over 9 pounds.

The private lake is about 15 acres and is in an open field. There is almost no cover in the lake except for a few stumps, and some grass grows in it during the summer. It gets lots of run-off fertilizer from the surrounding fields, and it has little water flowing through it. The green water shows it is very fertile from that combination.

Bryan says several factors help this lake be a big bass factory. The most important is lack of fishing pressure. Only about five people have permission to fish it, and they release most of the bass they catch there.

When Bryan caught the first 11-pounder he was told it was a “bass of a lifetime.” The second one really made folks think he had used up all his big bass luck for the rest of his life.

Now, at 20 years old, he has landed the 14th biggest bass ever recorded in Georgia!