By James Spiess, Age 14

I started fishing when I was about 4 years old, but I only caught blue gill and small bass. When I got older I started to catch musky, northern, large mouth and small mouth bass, and large crappie.

The day I caught the large mouth bass I was fishing on Red Rock Lake. It was early morning about 7:10 a.m. I threw out a dare devil spoon to try to catch a few northern, and maybe a bass. I caught a northern but threw it back because it was too small, only about 2 pounds.

A few hours later, about 9:10, I was kind of getting sick of fishing for northern, so I put a bobber on my line and a shiner minnow and threw it out onto the water hoping to catch a few crappies.

One minute later I saw my bobby go down, but I was too distracted to set the hook. It went down again so I set the hook. I thought it was just a small crappie, so I reeled the line in like I had all the time in the world. Then the bass jumped and I went crazy. I grabbed the line with my bare hands and started pulling it in because I only had 6 pound line and I didn't want the bass to snap the line. I pulled and pulled and pulled until the bass got to the boat. That's when I put my hands in the bass' mouth and pulled it up into the boat.

The large mouth bass was 8 pounds 11 ounces. I was so happy! I wanted to show my parents but I knew I had to do the right thing and put the bass back in the water. When I got the boat tied up to the dock, I ran and told my parents about the fish. They were proud of me.

James Spiess
Minnesota