Editor’s Note: After compiling some of the best fish stories from our female fishing fans over the last month or so, FLWOutdoors.com is finally ready to share them with the public. For the next several weeks, we’ll feature a different submission every week, with articles being posted on Mondays. To be sure, the stories submitted by our readers have been most impressive as well – ranging from the truly humorous to the utterly heartbreaking. We hope you’ll enjoy them as much as we did. And hopefully, as more and more women get involved in the wonderful sport of fishing, we’ll get to read and hear about many more stories from our female fans in the future. Enjoy.
Rhonda Jean Frattarelli
Clarksville, Tenn.
First bait-casting experience yields 8-pound-plus bass
I have always enjoyed fishing. I fished for perch, crappie, catfish – you know – little fish.
When my husband and I married, he was into bass fishing. I didn’t know anything about bass fishing. I went out on the boat with him one day. I was catching bass.
I was using a small reel. Three pounds is all I could catch. And my husband told me that if I did catch a big bass that I would probably loose it with that reel. So I asked him to show me how to use a reel like he had. He handed me a bait-caster and showed me how to cast it.
I tried a couple of times. Once I was comfortable, I went to the back of the boat and cast that reel. The same day I learned to use a bait-caster is the same day I caught an 8-pound, 5-ounce largemouth bass. I was so excited. I mounted that fish on the wall so that my husband could see what a bass of that size looks like since he has never caught one like that before.
Now I love bass fishing. That’s all I do now. I sure can’t catch 8-pound perch or crappie. I enjoy bass fishing so much that, this year for the first time, I am fishing in the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League LBL division as a co-angler.
Thanks to my husband; I really enjoy being on the lake all summer.