Lake Camanche, a well known big-bass fishery located on the Mokelumne River in the Sierra Nevada foothills, has kicked out a giant bass for angler Andrew Schmidgall. While fishing with a Wicked Weights jig in 25 to 30 feet of water, he hooked and landed a monster 14.71-pound largemouth bass. Schmidgall said it took him over 10 minutes to land the beast.
“It was the fish of a lifetime,” said Schmidgall.
He caught landed this 14-pounder on a 13 Fishing Omen casting rod and 12-pound Berkley Big Game monofilament line.
What’s even crazier, however, is that this isn’t even the biggest bass from this lake this year. On March 16, Tim Wells caught and released a 15.01-pound largemouth he caught while fishing a drop shot (here is our original story on that catch). The Lake Camanche record is an astonishing 18.17-pound bass that was caught in 2015. Experts point to the annual stocking of 4,000 to 6,000 juvenile Florida-strain largemouth bass as the primary reason for such big catches from this lake.
