Fort Peck Lake in northeast Montana is a sprawling reservoir that holds a great deal of walleyes and smallmouth bass. And it’s the place part-time fishing data Josh Johnson caught the bronzeback of his objectives on Tuesday.
“I’d always wished to catch a record-book fish, and I’d been after Montana’s smallie report since 2017,” Johnson tells Exterior Life. “I data on the lake part-time [when I’m not at] my oil topic job in North Dakota, and I do know the lake very properly.”
Johnson, who lives in Williston, North Dakota, went out on Fort Peck on Tuesday for a promotional journey with a kind out agency. He was fishing with Rob Doke from Swate Fishing Agency, cameraman Cody Adams, and match angler John Hunter.
“We have now been in my 23-foot Skeeter, and now we have been truly on the smallmouths that day,” says Johnson. “We had a five-fish bag of over 30 kilos, with a great deal of 5- and 6-pounders. I’d guess we caught about 30 bass that day.”
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Johnson says that rapidly after 5 p.m., with the day about over, he picked up the bait-casting rod that Hunter had merely used to catch one different 5-pounder. It was rigged with a ¾-ounce brown-and-green jig on 12-pound fluorocarbon line.
“I stable to a rocky degree within the precept lake that I fish recurrently when conditions are correct,” says Johnson, who owns Fishcast Angling data service. “I caught a small bass, after which about three casts later I obtained a strike, nonetheless the fish dropped the lure. Then the jig merely felt heavy, so the bass might want to have come once more to hit the jig [again.]”
The fish ran correct on the boat after which went deep. A few minutes later Johnson labored it topside the place all people inside the boat might even see it.
“It was a quick, intense wrestle, and when Rob hoisted it into the boat I was in disbelief,” Johnson says. “I put a tape measure on it and it was over 22 inches prolonged. I’d under no circumstances caught a smallmouth that prolonged, and I assumed it’s maybe a report. Nonetheless the bass was prolonged and lean, not fast and blocky like most huge smallmouths from Fort Peck.”
Johnson weighed the bass on a handheld scale he had inside the boat. It confirmed the fish was over 8 kilos — adequate to set a model new Montana report. (The current report of seven.84 kilos was moreover caught from Fort Peck Reservoir, in 2020.)
Johnson put the lunker in his boat’s livewell and ran straight to a close-by marina, the place they put the bass on licensed scales. It weighed 8.4 kilos and measured 22.4 inches prolonged. Johnson says he’s already submitted the paperwork and is just prepared for the state to approve the model new report.
After weighing the bass, Johnson returned it to his keep properly, ran to some deep-water building inside the lake, and launched the fish.
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“I let that fish go, and it swam away fast,” says Johnson, who plans to have a reproduction mount made. “I do know the place I launched it, and probably a 12 months from now I can catch it as soon as extra and probably break my very personal report.”