My First Bass

Back in the 70s I was on Ft. Stewart in Hinesville, GA. At Ft. Stewart they had lots of tanks trails and some of these trails went by ponds. On a early Summer evening I drove my car on one of these trails until I found one of those ponds and decided to try my luck at fishing. Up to this point, the only fishing I had done was when I was small and as a family, we would go deep sea fishing out of Tarpon Springs, on a head boat. The only fishing gear that I had with me was a basic rod, a Zebco 101 reel and a few plasic worms. I grabbed my gear and started walking into the water. I was wearing jeans, t-shirt and a pair of sneakers. I walked far enough to where the water was about 4 1/2-5 feet deep. Off to my right was a small cove type area. At the furthest part of this little cove was a dead log laying partially on land and the rest in the water. I put a plastic worm on my hook. My first cast hit and landed on the top the log. I thought to myself...Damn, now I am going to get hung up on that log. But I gently pulled the plastic worm until it plopped into the water right next to that log. The next thing I know I was pulling in what I thought was a submerged log or a bunch of submerged vegetation. It felt like dead weight. I pulled the weighted thing towards me. When there was only about 3-4 feet of line out, all of a sudden their was this huge splash and a big tail disappearing back into the water. It all happened very quickly and scared the heck out of me. I though I just had some plant or something on the end of my line but as it turned out, it was an almost 8 pound largemouth bass. This was the first bass that I had ever caught. Just goes to show you, you don't need high dollar equiptment to catch fish.