Just caught the biggest bass of my life!

Got out of Speech class a little early and it was semi-light out after a quick storm so I decided to head down to a little local pond to try to catch a bass or two in the twenty minutes before it got totally dark.

It's a little walk from the car to the pond so I was kinda spooked a couple times walking through the trees in the mostly-dark.

Finally got down to the water, tossed in the 7" Powerworm that's been rigged up since last Friday.  got a couple knocks on it, missed the hookset, reeled in.  I pulled back to cast and smacked the worm/weight off my line on the dock behind me, scaring up something HUGE about ten yards away along the shore.
 
Swearing, I (very clumsily in the dark) tied on a $1 buzzbait from Walmart and whipped it out along the shoreline.  This was my first time fishing a buzzbait so I retrieved just like I've read to, started reeling right before it hit the water and steadily brought it over the surface.

I couldn't see my bait at this point so my second cast I can hear my bait on the surface, followed by a little splash and silence...  Immediately after I feel a pull on the line so I jerked up and had her.  This is the first time I had a fish really run hard so I let her run a little and reeled in as much as I could.  When I got her up to the shore I couldn't tell how big she was so I swung her up on shore.  She was pretty huge. (by my standards anyway!)  I don't have a measuring tape but she went from the end of my pinky to my elbow and felt like she weighed about 3-3.5lbs.  When I went to get the hook out, I shined my cell phone in her mouth and saw the tip of something's tail sticking out of her throat.  I tried to take a picture but my phone has no flash. :(  I managed to get a blob of my arm and a blob of the fish that I'll put on here.  Not very believable or exciting but at least its evidence... Sort of.

Thats what windows came up with when I hit auto-fix.  you can see my hand at the top holding her by the lip. Like I said, not very exciting but hopefully it lets everyone know I'm not just telling fish stories. :)

I thought about taking her home but it was about 9:20 and I have work in the morning so I didn't wanna stay way up to figure out how to clean her.  (Haven't cleaned a fish in about 10 years.)  I had her out of the water for about a minute at this point and didn't want to run all the way back to the car and streetlamps just to take a picture so I let her go.  I then picked up my rod and realized I didn't have my line run through the end eye on my pole the whole time!  Got pretty lucky I guess.  She messed up the buzzbait, bent it and ripped the skirt down to the bottom of the hook so I took it off, fixed the line, tied on a Rat L Trap lookalike and tossed that a few times with no bites.

I'll probably be going back there again Sunday so hopefully I can get her again and get a decent picture this time,  I'll cross my fingers.  :)

Lessons learned: Buy a cheap digital camera with a flash.  Buy a scale and tape measure so I don't just have a blobby picture as evidence!  Buy more cheap buzzbaits at Walmart!

Tight lines everybody!