STORIES

The Catch

One year ago Grant Langmore did something no one had ever done — he caught Lady Bird Lake's record largemouth bass at age 13.
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Grant Langmore
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Fishing Lady Bird Lake is beyond addicting. Above the water you have a modern urban setting. Below the water you have a distorted arrangement of man-made structures. The hunt for the giant, elusive, largemouth bass living in the lake means you have to fish among fallen bridges, dormant power plants and the occasional snagging anchor rope. You just never know what a day will hold.

Having Lady Bird Lake so close to my house is a luxury but fishing it without a boat makes targeting Lady Bird’s giant bass difficult.  It means stomping the banks for countless hours through poison ivy and everything else you find on the shores of an urban lake.  Like every fisherman, I’ve always dreamed of having a bass boat.  At the end of an especially frustrating day without a bite, my friend Will and I tried one last spot where we’d caught fish before.  Crawling through our urban jungle knowing I would probably be covered in poison ivy the next day, out of the corner of my eye, sitting in a tangle of weeds and covered in trash and leaves, I spotted an aluminum jon boat.  It wasn’t a bass boat but as Will and I dredged the beat down boat out of its cocoon we were beyond excited to see if she would float.  We were shocked to find it in perfect working order, even if it was old and dirty.  Every evening after that we dragged it out to fish and then just before dark dragged it back into its hiding place.  Eventually, one day we went back to find it no longer there, but, I can still tell you just about every fish I caught out of that hidden treasure of a boat.