Queensland, Australia — Australian B.A.S.S. Nation member Dan McCoy became a potential world record holder when he caught a lunker Australian bass during a tournament Aug. 18 at Lake Somerset.
McCoy’s bass weighed 4.455 kilograms (approximately 9.82 pounds) and was 705 grams (1.54 pounds) heavier than the previous International Game Fish Association (IGFA) record set on July 24, 2005. The Australian Nation angler reported he finished second by 0.15748 of an inch in the tournament which measured instead of weighed the contestants’ catches.
While fishing a flat on the side of a creek drop-off, McCoy was slowly retrieving and hopping a 20-gram Palms Slow Blatt Oval Spoon along the bottom when he caught the big fish. “He fought like a steam train for a few minutes, then he was dead weight like he had snagged in some structure, but I kept tension on the line and I started gaining line on him,” said McCoy, the 2017 Co-Anglers Australian Nation Champion. “Approximately 10 minutes later he was in the boat.”
McCoy and his partner fished the final hour of the tournament and headed to the weigh-in. “There was quite a circus at the weigh-in with the amount of people taking photos and looking at the fish, which was pretty cool,” McCoy continued. A local tackle shop operator was at the weigh-in and had IGFA-calibrated scales and a measuring device. He measured and documented the fish and took 10 feet of line and leader off McCoy’s rod to send with forms to IGFA for verification.
“We placed the fish back in the livewell after weigh-in, motored out to the same depth we caught the fish and released him to swim off hopefully to be caught again in the future,” McCoy said.
McCoy said his Australian bass will hold three world records (longest, heaviest and line class of largest fish on 6-pound braid and 10-pound leader) pending IGFA verification.
