A bass called JAWS

You’ve heard the triumphant tail, er, tale of Steelie Dan, the homeward-bound steelhead, and a salmon named King and its tragic story of unfuilled destiny.

Now, it’s time to sit back and learn the ballad of the huge bass they called Jaws…

A ceaseless string of storms had been hammering the valley for a solid month. The low-pressure fronts gave the big bass the fish equivalent of a headache, and though the dark, sunless skies would normally have coaxed him out of his lair in search of prey, he maintained a low profile.

Jaws had spent much of the previous Indian summer plowing through dense schools of threadfin shad in the lake, quickly adding layers of fat to his already impressive girth. Then, when warm fall abruptly gave way to a stormy winter, he sought solace on a rocky reef 30 feet below the surface.

By nature, Jaws would have preferred to spend the winter huddled up close to woody structure or perhaps in a deep weedbed, but submerged cover in his home water was noticeably deficient. So, as the cold water of December turned his metabolism to molasses, Jaws took refuge on this rockpile and claimed it as his.

While smaller members of his species were huddled together in vast suspended schools, Jaws remained a loner. Occasionally, a lesser bass would try to take up residence on his rocks and such action was usually met with a swift and unmistakable retaliation.

Foraging catfish sometimes poked around Jaws’ home, but he had learned in his formative years that they had stiff spines that warranted they be left, unmolested, to go about their business.

It was with much uneasiness, however, that the huge bass allowed the be-whiskered critters to get so near. He would lie motionless, his great belly lying on the rocks, his bulging eyes tracking the cats’ every movement and his upturned jaw frowning at the entire spectacle.

Some time in early February, Jaws’s lateral line detected a signal that intensely excited him. The drab green scales along his flanks suddenly radiated an electric, anti-freeze green and his dorsal and pelvic fins stood erect. The commotion continued and Jaws, for the first time in weeks, left his rocky sanctuary and climbed to the edge of the sandy flat above his home.

The intriguing sounds and vibrations of disarray drew him on and he followed the disturbance into the shallows, and eventually, to the back of a cove where the lake’s main boat ramp was located. In the summer months, Jaws gave the launching cove a wide berth, as the constant criss-crossing of boat shadows on the bottom made him uneasy.

This time, however, there were no shadows, just fascinating sounds of water rushing and the sense that something was happening. Something big. Jaws proceeded cautiously towards the activity and then saw a dark, massive cloud of fish milling around. The Department of Fish & Game’s trout truck was backed up to the water’s edge on the boat ramp and sending a steady stream of water and fresh hatchery rainbows into the lake.

When the trout hit the water, they swam in dazed circles as they desperately fought to gain their equilibrium and recover from the shock of the ride. Jaws surveyed the situation momentarily and then dashed headlong into the unsuspecting school. In a flash, the horrible jaws hinged open and a 12-inch rainbow disappeared without a trace.

Through the rest of the winter, Jaws learned to recognize when the trout truck was visiting and he would make regular calls on the helpless rainbows of the launching cove. As the water temperatures warmed in early spring, the trout stopped coming. That combined with Jaws’s increased hunger, forced him to leave his deepwater haunt and start patrolling the shallows. With every degree that the water temperature warmed, more and more aquatic life appeared in the shallows and Jaws became increasingly hungry.

One morning, he ambushed 8 crayfish along a rip-rap bank; another day, he gulped down two 4-inch bluegills that wandered too close. Late one evening, dined on a baby mallard and narrowly missed a second when he came upon a family of ducks swimming across a shallow cove.

The next afternoon, chased by the harsh rays of the bright sun, Jaws retreated to deep water. During the heat of the day, the big bass had little interest in feeding, but when a large, oblivious golden shiner swam by, not 3 feet in front of his nose, instinct kicked in. With a mind-blurring burst of his tail, the huge bass lunged at his prey and the dreadful aperture for which his kind is so well known enveloped the shiner in one, fluid motion. All that was left of the smaller fish was a raining cloud of copper scales that Jaws ejected from his gills like some sort of thalassic exhaust.

As the spring wore on, Jaws often saw smaller bucks of his species running parallel to the banks — the early “scouts” looking for nesting henfish. Like young males of most species, however, these bass were a little too eager to find love and they soon found that the females were not yet up from the depths. Jaws instinctively knew that his procreational services wouldn’t be required for another several weeks yet, so he continued to wander the shallows during the low light periods and hunted for easy meals.

As he patrolled a likely-looking cut bank one early morning, a nearby splash caught Jaws’s attention. Feeling more aggressive by the day, he headed right for the sound instead of shying away from it as he would have done a month earlier.

On the bottom, the bass noticed an unfortunate waterdog was crawling along an exposed portion of the bottom, with no cover in sight. An easy target. Jaws rushed over to suck up the hapless critter, but then, some deep-seeded instinct told him to slow down.

As the waterdog slowly made its way out toward deeper water, Jaws trailed right behind, watching with a discriminating eye. With his nose pointed down at the salamander’s tail, Jaws appeared like a bloodhound, hot on the trail of a raccoon. Then, the big bass would back off for a few seconds, as if to ponder the situation, and as the waterdog continued crawling away, he’d catch back up to it. The waterdog crawled. The bass followed.

Jaws trailed his prey for about 20 feet and just when he was sure the salamander was counterfeit, it crawled over a rock and started descending a steep drop-off.

Sensing his meal was about to escape, Jaws let all prudence disappear in a sandy swirl of his tail and he inhaled the waterdog. Immediately, Jaws knew something was not right. The creature didn’t squirm in his mouth, in a desperate attempt to escape like most everything else he swallowed. And as the hook point bore ever deeper into the roof of his jaw and an unseen pressure pulled him in a direction he didn’t want to travel, Jaws felt the panic overtake him. He shook his head violently, tying to expel the offending plastic lizard. When it didn’t budge, he surged for the bottom but was cut short by the steady force from above.

Jaws allowed himself to rest for a brief second, but the feeling of being pulled towards the surface against his will sent him into another lunge for the bottom. Almost 20 feet down, the mammoth bass began swimming in slow circles and continued shaking his head. From above, the pressure continued until Jaws felt his strength slowly slipping away.

Begrudgingly, he gave up the bottom and began the deadly ascent to the surface. Occasionally, Jaws would try to plow back down to the bottom, but his efforts were always cut short.

He was now only 10 feet below the surface. Jaws could see the silhouette of the boat against the flushed sky of dawn. The end was near.

As the angler brought Jaws boatside, the fish made one last effort for freedom. He veered under the vessel and used his last reserves of energy to run as far as he could out the other side. This caused the fisherman to hold his rod tip straight down in the water so the fish wouldn’t drag the line across any abrasive edges on the bottom of the hull.

Feeling the desperate charge of the bass, the angler tried to run up to the bow and clear his line from under the boat. Fish and fisherman had to be on the same side of the boat for everything to work out.

In the excitement of hooking the huge bass, the fishermen’s partner forgot to raise the electric trolling motor on the bow. The man with the fish on, however, realized too late, and the feeling of the line going limp made him sick.

The 14-pound test had popped as the fish drug it across the motor’s burred skeg, leaving him to stare blankly into the inky void where the biggest bass of his life, one in excess of 18 pounds, had just been.

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