‘That Ain’t No Crappie.’ Watch This 13-Year-Old Catch a State-Record Largemouth Bass Through the Ice
Obsession can take root at any age. Take, for example, Kyler Leslie, a 13-year-old from Massachusetts who pulled a state-record largemouth through the ice on Feb. 23. The 7.71-pound bass is a monster by Northeast standards, and it ties a record in the catch-and-release division. The catch was all the more impressive because the diehard teenager caught it on 4-pound test during wintertime after 12 months of intense and obsessive effort.
Kyler, along with his younger brother Ryker, fished around 300 days last year. The boys had learned about the state’s Angler of the Year Award while attending a Massachusetts Fish and Wildlife event with their dad, Mike, in March 2024. This sent them down a yearlong rabbit hole to catch as many eligible species as possible. With full support from their parents, the brothers achieved their goal and were both named Youth Angler of the Year.
“They caught well over 5,000 fish, and were awarded 314 bronze pins — 157 species each, so they were dead tied,” Mike tells Outdoor Life. “They had made an agreement with themselves when they got to a certain point, that if the other can’t catch [a certain] species, they wouldn’t submit that species [either]. So, they were either going to tie and win Angler of the Year together, or they weren’t going to win at all.”
Mike says state wildlife officials made the announcement on Jan. 24. (Kyler and Ryker will receive their awards at a ceremony on March 15.) But the two anglers weren’t about to rest on their laurels, not with ice-fishing conditions still in prime shape. A month later, on Feb. 23, they headed out with their dad to a lake near the Vermont state line. Kyler says they’d fished the spot a couple times before and caught trout, so that’s what they were after initially.
“This lake is probably around 31 acres, so it’s pretty small, and only half of it is deeper, open water,” says Kyler, who’d rather keep the lake’s name to himself. “We didn’t know a ton about the spot, but our goal was to catch some brook trout, and it was a nice day, bright and sunny.”
After drilling some holes near shore and setting up baited rods with jaw jackers, Kyler and Mike drilled a dozen more holes for jig fishing further out in the lake. They were bouncing from hole to hole, using their Vexilar sonar device to search for fish, when Mike spotted a big blob near the bottom.
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“It looked like it was moving a little bit, so I dropped my jig down and saw the fish come up,” Kyler says. “I feathered him up and tried to get him interested, and he came up and looked at the bait, but then he stopped, paused, and dropped back down.”
Kyler then dropped the lure again and teased the fish up, but it still wouldn’t bite. This little game of cat-and-mouse went on until Kyler showed the fish his lure a fourth time.
“Normally we only get one or two shots at a fish like this until it spooks off or loses interest. But the fourth time must have been just right, because he smoked it,” he says. “So I lifted the jigging rod and it felt like a log. And I’m like, ‘That ain’t no crappie.’ I knew it wasn’t a trout either, because trout like to dart at the bait, and this take was slow and methodical.”
The battle, though, was anything but slow. The giant bass ran toward the nearest boat dock and peeled line off the small ice-fishing reel. Kyler, who was only using 4-pound test, knew he had to play the fish slowly and gingerly, and he kept the drag nice and loose as the fish ran for 40 to 50 yards under the ice. Thankfully, Kyler says, the big largemouth wore itself out just before it reached the nearest dock piling, which would have been game over.
After five minutes of anxiety-inducing, drag-burning runs, Kyler was able to turn the bass back toward him and slowly work it to the surface. Mindful to keep the ultralight line from fraying on the sharp ice, he pulled the bass up to the hole and grabbed it by its bottom lip.
“When I went to lift it up, I put my whole entire hand in its mouth. It felt like I was grabbing that thing with all of my life,” Kyler says. “I was just joking the other day about how, normally, when you catch a lot of bass, you’ll have a scraped-up thumb. But with this one, the scrapes were on my palm.”
As Mike’s video footage from that day shows, the moment Kyler laid hands on the fish was pure emotion. Shaking uncontrollably with his knees on the ice, Kyler holds up the biggest bass of his life and laughs like a man possessed.
“It’s this kid’s passion, fishing and hunting and chasing those dreams,” Mike says. “He’s hardcore, man.”
The post ‘That Ain’t No Crappie.’ Watch This 13-Year-Old Catch a State-Record Largemouth Bass Through the Ice appeared first on Outdoor Life.
Source: https://www.outdoorlife.com/fishing/video-teenager-massachusetts-record-bass/
