he was semi-serious.

But even as steeped in the salmonid mystique as we are, we can still fully appreciate the breaking of a state bass record set way back in 1977, because it would have to be a huge fish to accomplish what some good bass fishermen thought might never happen. And it was, indeed, an awesome largemouth caught early last week — 12.53 pounds, 20 inches in length and with a girth of 22.5 inches. It destroyed the previous record of 11.57 pounds, caught nearly 40 years ago in Banks Lake.

Bill Evans of Bothell caught the monster bass Aug. 8 in Lake Bosworth, a small lake about two miles south of Granite Falls and a popular opening-day trout water. Evans is a veteran of four decades of bass fishing but moved here a few years back and only broke out his tackle this summer. He fished several lakes in the area; last week being his first trip to Bosworth.

The lucky lure was a 5-inch Strike King Shim-E-stick, wacky-rigged on a 1/0 hook. The Strike King folks tout the plastic worm as a good alternate to sinking stick bait-type lures, and Curt Kraemer of Marysville says “wacky-rigged” means simply hooked part way down the worm to give it more of an off-center, erratic movement.