Big Indiana Bass

B.A.S.S. has a century club, the one you've probably heard of. Its members are those anglers who have weighed in more than 100 pounds in a single Elite Series event under the modern 5 fish limit. "The Club" had 35 members back in early 2010, and has added a few more since then. However, you could argue that there is another century club, that being those persons who have caught more than 100 bass in a single day on the water. For anglers who chase numbers instead of "pigs" or "checks", 100 is a magic number. Whether it's a pair of anglers in the boat for a day (tough), or a single angler accomplishment (even tougher), there's a lot more that goes into achieving such a feat than just "luck."

Noted big bass guru Mike Long recently summed it up best:

"For the average angler, a fishing trip is gauged by numbers and perhaps a quality bass or two. For a tournament fisherman, it's typically about the best five he can put in the livewell. If you're serious about catching the bass of a lifetime, however, it's all about a couple of bites and what you do with them...The standards (for each) are equally legitimate but tend to be mutually exclusive."

After reaching this 100 bass goal just last week, I went searching through my records to see how many times I had achieved it, and to the best of my recollection, I could only find 4 instances. They were:

1. Lake Waveland, 104 bass, Sept. 2005 - alone
2. Lake Waveland, 101 bass, May 2011 - w/Jacob Wheeler
3. Mallard Lake, 108 bass, December 2011 - w/Jacob Wheeler
4. Heritage Lake, 102 bass, Sept. 2013 - alone

I know I've had a bunch of 50, 60, even 80 bass days on numerous lakes over the years, but these are the only 4 where I know for certain the magic number of 100 bass was met, mainly because I used a counter on such trips - most trips, beginning about 10 years ago.

One important point to make is that this is not an easy task to achieve. Even searching the Internet for reports from other states, you don't see it mentioned as much as you'd think. Ned Kehde of In-Fisherman/Midwest Finesse fame has been a proponent of chasing that elusive 100 bass day for quite some time, and has established a few of the requirements to help put the odds in an anglers favor. Efficiency is obviously one of the requisites. The faster you can catch them without having to adjust or replace your bait, or without wasting time running all over the lake, the more you tip the odds in your favor.

Another is fishing lakes with known large populations of bass. Studying fisheries reports and seing what the CPUE (catch per unit effort) for bass on a given lake is can lead you to the right bodies of water. May of the larger bodies of water frequented by tournament anglers like Monroe, Patoka or the Ohio River would rarely give up such numbers. You need to look for lakes that have been recently renovated, that have stable spawning populations, or that many anglers overlook because they don't produce lots of "keepers."

One common misconception is that if you fish  "private" waters or ponds, you could easily do this - not true. This scenario of catching 100 or more bass a day is exactly opposite of the one faced by anglers who solely chase big bass. Every body of water, even private ones, simply won't produce numbers of giant bass, and likewise many bodies of water won't produce numbers of bass. It takes certain environmental and biological conditions to create both types of fisheries, because they are not the norm. The norm is a good balance of small, medium and large individuals (bass) that don't over or under populate, neither of which tends to produce either lots of giant bass, or on the other end of the spectrum, "fish factories." Instead, they produce the kind of waters most tournament anglers like to fish, where a 20 pound sack is a possibility, but a winning sack of 12-18 pounds is much more likely, and where a big bass might typically run between 5 and 6 pounds. This is your more typical Indiana fishery. Not great on size, not great on numbers, but a decent balance otherwise.

Another point Mike made in that same article was that there is an attitude adjustment that all anglers have to make as pertains to their catching "class." For example, he says that of big bass anglers, "It's OK to show up at the ramp empty-handed, and it's OK to tell your buddies you didn't catch anything that day, because you're not after the same fish they're chasing, and you're not measuring your experience the way they measure theirs." That bolded part is very important - key, actually!

The same applies between any category. If you're a tournament angler, it really doesn't matter whether you only caught 5 bass all day long, or whether you caught a giant bass, if you won the tournament. That's the goal you measure your success by. Likewise, if a numbers guy catches 50 or more bass in a day (always my goal), but only a couple are decent quality, nobody should compare that catch against a tournament anglers catch based on lack of overall size, because again, the goals are totally different. Like Mike states, "It's an important adjustment, and some guys just can't do it."

I think a good many anglers simply don't care what they catch, and a good many more, especially many of those that follow this site, would be classed as tournament anglers. The other two categories, the numbers guys along with the big bass guys, are actually in the minority. Not many guys really only care about catching big bass, and not many guys really only focus on numbers, size be damned. But I think regardless of what type angler you are, the above thoughts will hopefully help shed some light on the mentality of various anglers, and why comparing catches and using them to make some type of judgement about an angler needs to be done carefully to be done correctly.

NOTE: As an aside and update, yesterday evening I broke the 1,000 bass mark for the year. Actually, it was achieved in just 82 days, since I didn't start tracking my catches this year until June 29. No telling exactly how many I caught to add to that number in the 3+ months previous of open water. I only restarted the tracking this year after making a major adjustment to my on-the-water approach, and wanting to evaluate how effective it was.