Wintertime fish story part 1

First year out of high school. I was crazy about largemouth fishing back then. Single, cheap gas, money from that first real job, I fished a lot back then, and wasn't a slacker like nowadays. I'm pretty sure I snuck into just about every single farm pond in Warren county fishing a musky jitterbug at night for big bass. Remember the shimano bantam 100? The newest bestest baitcaster in the world back then. I remember fishing with mine so much that I wore the chrome plating off the side frame where I palmed the reel at. Well my brother Vic was selling fishing lures at the Cincy boat and travel show. (Back then they actually had fishing tackle at the show) I met this slow talking guy from Georgia that owned a huge farming operation. Well it turned out he had all these ponds and lakes dug all over the property to irrigate his farm from. I forget what the exact details were but I ended up paying him like a hundred bucks for his trouble and I could camp on his land for a week and fish all his different ponds and lakes. What a different world for a kid from Ohio. Some ponds had cypress trees growing in them with cypress knees sticking up everywhere. Others had big live oaks along the banks with spanish moss hanging down. In the evening farmers in bibs and floppy straw hats would catch giant bream on 15 foot long cane poles. It was a different world and I'd never seen anything like it before. The bass fishing was slow but when you caught one it was four or five pounds. Three or four of those a day made a kid fresh out of school pretty happy. I remember fishing a huge 3/4 ounce willow leaf spinnerbait with blades like five inches long every day trying for THE fish. Finally just about the time I'd given up hope this guy crushed it. Ten pounds four ounces! To this day I remember putting it the cooler because I was going to get it mounted and the tail lapping up on one end because it wouldn't fit. That's my clearest memory of the fish, being this excited kid looking in the cooler at this fish that didn't fit.