New Personal Best River Largemouth

    This trip started out like any other evening trip to the river.  Smiley and I loaded up the gear and headed down to a deeper section of the river where we usually do good on largemouth and spotted bass.  We arrived at the river in the late afternoon/early evening hour and launched our boats.  The sun was shinning but the wind was blowing pretty hard and this put a chop on the water so I started out trying faster stuff in the moving water to try and catch a feeding fish or two. 
    I began fishing up to a shoal and was working my bullshad back to me with a pretty fast stop and go retrieve.  The wind was blowing hard enough to push me upriver towards the shoal I was fishing.  I could see a rock that was about 3ft underwater that had a ledge that dropped off into deeper water and this was right up in the middle of the mostly shallow shoal.  So I worked my swimbait over that rock and killed the lure to let it sink over the ledge.  Right when I began reeling it in fast to make another cast, a giant bass comes up out of that deep hole and tries to take the rod from my hands.  I only had about 5 feet of line out when the fish hit and it was a big fish so I gave it some line so it had a little room to fight.  I was standing up all the while fighting this fish and getting blown into the shoal.  The fish tried to jump but could only get it's massive head out of the water, giving me the impression that this fish was 10lbs or bigger.  It made one more attempt at jumping and I pulled it beside the yak and shoved my hand in it's mouth.  I hoisted the fish up and was amazed at how skinny this bass was.  His head showed hints at a better day when the fish probably weighed 10lbs+ but in it's present condition the fish measured 24" long and weighed 8.5lbs. 
    Wasn't my first 10lb river bass but it was my personal best river largemouth.  I have been lucky enough to catch a 10lb largemouth bass but not from a river.  My previous personal best river largemouth was 7lb 15oz.  The fish didn't cooperate after that bass and we decided to pack it up and head home.  We were going on a camping and fishing trip the next day and I didn't want to use up all my luck, which may have been the case anyways seeing as I scored my new best river largemouth!  Happy fishing everyone.