In the early 1990s I had a chance to fish famed Lake Castaic in California with world largemouth bass record holders Bob Crupi and Danny Kadota. While the fishing wasn’t great that day…we landed one five-pound bass between us…I learned a number of things from these two great anglers who between them have l caught five largmouth that averaged more than 20 pounds apiece! Bob still holds several line class records for largemouth; most or all of his giants came on a live crawdad hooked once through the “horn” and allowed sink unweighted over key fish-holding spots.
A key to Crupi’s success was his unusual anchoring method. He would use not one, but huge anchors (28 pounds apiece is I recall correctly). Once he located the spot he wanted to fish, he would run past it a hundred and fifty or more feet and then drop anchor number one. He would then go past the spot again, this time in the opposite direction, and drop anchor number two. Finally, he would carefully snug each anchor line up until he was directly over is his fishing spot, bow into the wind.
This double anchor technique allowed Crupi to put his boat exactly where he wanted to it without the boat swinging on the anchor line. That allowed him to fish the live crawdad as naturally as possible.
Twenty years and several states later I’ve yet to run into another angler who used two anchors in this fashion.
The second thing learned from Bob was respect for equipment, particularly his rods, reels and lines. He constantly checked his line for wear and retied if he found any abrasion at all. Also, he would never store a hook or lure by sticking it through a rod guide at the end of the day (a bad habit I developed at an early age). He claimed (correctly) that doing so could scratch, crack or damage the inside of the guide and put the line at risk when fighting a big fish.
Since then, I’ve avoided the practice and thank Bob for the lesson.
A lot has changed in California over the past two decades. Lake Castaic is no longer pumping out giant largemouths in the numbers it had been and I hearing the state is cutting back on stocking rainbow trout, the swimming Snicker bars that the big bass used to grow big and fat. so there may be fewer giants in other lakes as well. But the state still hold most of the top bass records and until another can knock it off the leader board it is still the state to beat for huge bass.
Steve
