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By Ed Zieralski, San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER June 3, 2003
Say one thing about that huge, history-making largemouth bass caught Saturday at Dixon Lake. It's moving up on the charts. It turns out that Jed Dickerson's 21.70-pound largemouth, the fourth-heaviest bass ever caught in the world, may have been the same bass caught by big-bass hunter Mike Long on April 27, 2001, at Dixon Lake. Long was asked Saturday if Dickerson's bass might be the same bass, a 20.75-pounder that Long caught and released at Dixon, but Long said he didn't believe it was. But upon further review . . . and after looking at the film . .
"It's the same bass I released in 2001," Long said. "When I first saw it, I didn't think it was, but after I got my pictures back, I could see that it had the same black dot on the right lower side of its cheek that mine did." Dickerson's bass, a potential International Game Fish Association line-class, world-record catch on 20-pound line, measured 281/2 inches long and sported a 263/4-inch girth. If Dickerson's bass is the same largemouth Long landed and released, it has lost a bit of its waistline and grown some length. Long's bass caught in 2001 was, as Long referred to it then, "a perfect bass; it looked like it swallowed a basketball." Long's bass measured 27 inches long, 11/2 inches less than Dickerson's, and had a girth of 27 inches, 1/4-inch more than Dickerson's.
"There are just a whole bunch of the same identifying marks that the bass I caught had," Long said. "It's the same bass, just bigger now." Dickerson celebrated his big catch by returning to Dixon yesterday to try for another bass. He plans to submit the catch to the IGFA to be considered for a line-class world record for 20-pound test line. The present mark is a 19-pounder caught by Dan Kadota in 1989 at Castaic. Dickerson, 30, of Carlsbad, didn't realize his catch shattered that mark until a reporter told him about it later in the day.
"It's all starting to hit me right now," he said. "This is something I've wanted to do for three years, but it's like, when I finally did it, I didn't know what to say." Dickerson released the record bass later in the morning, and he said it swam away powerfully. "She swam straight out and down, which is good," he said. Dickerson said he had a premonition that he might catch a huge bass on Saturday.
"I fished the same week last year, the last week of May, and I caught an 111/2-, a 131/2-and a 141/2-pounder," Dickerson said. "I lost a huge bass in that same period. I think it was as big or bigger than this one." He said he plans to contact all the companies that made the equipment he used to catch the bass.
He used a Mission Fish, a plastic imitation trout-pattern swimbait, on 20-pound P-Line, spooled on a Calcutta 400 reel and G-Loomis Muskie Light Bucktail rod. Companies often give product, cash and appearance fees to anglers who use their gear to catch historic fish. And there isn't a fish around right now that has more history than this bass, once possibly the eighth-heaviest bass in the world, but certainly now fourth on the big-bass chart. "See, catch and release works," Long said.
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