6410 South Sylvan Lake Drive. I'll remember that address for the rest of my life. It was the house that I primarily grew up in as a kid. And of course, it's located on the beautiful Lake Sylvan. I knew that lake like the back of my hand. All of the bottom substrates, the depths, the little side eddies that were hidden and tucked away, all of it to me was as memorized as my fiancee's coffee order. Cold brew latte with two pumps of vanilla. It was the summer of 2022, a few months after Mariah and I had gotten engaged. We'd already set our wedding date of December 10th and had been planning it for a few months at that point. Like we always did on typical date nights, we drove out to Chipotle Mexican Grill and picked up our favorite orders, then proceeded to take it back to the house and put it in the fridge to save for after the main event of our date night: fishing. I'd been fishing Lake Sylvan for a large portion of my life, but never did I think I would catch a fish as big as I did that day. 

We made our way down to the lake a few hours before sunset, with sunglasses and water bottles in our hands. We hopped on the boat and lowered it down into the lake. I still remember the horrifying screeching noise that the boat lift made every time it went up or down. That thing helped me wake up several neighbors over the years from some early morning fishing trips. I sat where I normally did, in the back part of the skiff with one hand on the trolling motor and one on my fishing pole. Mariah sat up in the front like always. Fishing pole in hand, looking out to the horizon. She always looked so beautiful out on the water. Don't get me wrong, she always looked good. But to see that woman with the fishing pole in her hand, hair blown by the wind, during the fading hours of the day was always something special. I couldn't believe that I was going to get married to this girl. It was crazy to me that the first ever girl that I went on a date with was also going to be the same girl that I ended up spending the rest of my life with. I still thank God for that every day. After a brief talk about what lures we were going to use, we slowly made our way East through the little cove right next to the house. Not very many fish were biting while we slowly rolled through that part of the lake, but I didn't care. Fishing to me has never really been about the fish we catch. Of course, it's always an added bonus when we catch a lot of fish or a trophy bass, but the experience itself, and sharing it with another person - especially a loved one - is what makes the time so meaningful and worthwhile. It's the scenery, the nature, the birds chirping, and dragonflies buzzing over the water. It's the big sky, and the tea-colored water. It's the moment you catch her looking at you with a loving and longing smile. To me, it will always be paradise.

Before long, we both had caught a few smaller-sized bass. After heading North for a few more minutes along the shore, we came to the most eastward point of the entire lake. It's always the quietest part, because there's only one dock - and it stretches over a half a mile from the owner's home, over cattails and sawgrass - before it reaches the grips of the lake. I always loved fishing this spot because I never knew what I was going to get. Sometimes I got no bites whatsoever. Other times we would pull four, five, or six bass off of the structure. It was such a unique habitat for fish because it very dramatically dropped off from a few feet to about 30, which was the deepest point in the lake. 

As we first approached, I casted under one of the many pylons that made up this goliath of a dock. As I slowly retrieved my Zoom Mag2 soft plastic worm, I felt a thump on the end of my rod and set the hook. I was able to land the fish pretty quickly, and it was a decent-sized fish, so I grabbed the scale from the tackle box. 4.34 pounds, definitely the biggest of the day so far. And the biggest I had caught in a few weeks as well. The weaning weeks of summer slowly begin to produce less and less trophy fish as fall begins to approach and fish become less active in the colder waters. This was a solid fish, and I was happy with it. We snapped a few pictures, and got her back on her way. Mission accomplished.

However, I knew that Mariah still hadn't caught any big fish on this particular trip so we slowly motored to the other side of the dock to try our luck, giving us one last chance before we would journey back home. As Mariah casted forward to the front of the pylons, I casted behind her and placed my lure right at the threshold where it gets deep very quickly. I then felt a sensation on the end of my rod that only happens with monster size largemouth bass, it was almost like a vacuum of a surprise attack as my worm was suction fed into the gullet of a lurking largemouth. Before I even set the hook, I could tell this was the fish of a lifetime. The slow and steady confidence of a predator and the way that it stalks its prey in that fashion is unmistakable. I set the hook and immediately my reel began screaming. The line was pulling out meter by meter. The simple fact that there was a bass strong enough to be pulling line out of my reel was something that is still hard to fathom. I tightened my drag, looked at Mariah, and said with an enlivened smile, "this could very well be the biggest fish of my life". After several acrobatic jumps and deep runs, indeed it was - I had just caught the biggest largemouth bass I had ever seen.

In the chaotic process of landing a fish that dense, the scale that I had gotten out of the tackle box earlier fell in the back of the boat, where there was a little bit of standing water. It quickly became waterlogged and broke. But after successfully removing the hook from the fish's mouth, I was still able to lay her on the deck of the skiff and measure her out from mouth to tail: an astounding 27.5 inches. For a largemouth bass, that size is almost unheard of. And many great fishermen live their whole lives without catching a trophy as big as that. I did a quick online conversion on my phone to find out that a 27.5 inch bass would weigh approximately 13.3 pounds. For context, in the world of largemouth bass, a fish over 6 pounds is considered a trophy. And this fish was double that standard! I sat there in absolute awe and befuddlement at the lake monster I had just hauled over the side of my boat. Mariah, standing on the bow, began squealing with excitement as she took out her phone to start documenting one of the happiest memories of my life. She got dozens of pictures and videos, and after a while, we let the record-setting fish sink back into the water, warmly glowing from the sunset. She swam off in a manner reminiscent of a World War I tank rolling through no man's land as she crossed the barrier into the depths.

A little more than three years later, I still haven't caught anything even close to that size. Mariah and I are married now, and plan on starting to have kids in the near future. And I know that as they grow older and I get to see them fall in love with fishing the same way I did, I'll be able to tell them a nostalgic tale of how their mom and dad caught one of the biggest bass to ever grace North American waters.