Competitive angler Dante Piraino may soon be confirmed as the holder of the New York State smallmouth bass record. Piraino was fishing a New York Federation B.A.S.S. Nation Tournament in Ogdensburg, New York on Sunday, September 22, when the epic catch went down.
Piraino started the morning by making a long run down the St. Lawrence River. He was fishing in the Cape Vincent area, using a Berkley Flatnose Minnow soft plastic lure rigged to a leadhead and a Garmin livescope to target fish. He started the morning with two small bass before hooking into something much larger.
“I was thinking about leaving the area, but I stuck around to give it a chance,” Piraino tells Wired2Fish. “At about 9 o’clock, I hooked a big one. I didn’t realize how big it was at first; it fought hard, but I thought it was just a six pounder. When I netted it and went to flip it into the boat, it was heavier than expected.”
Piraino had caught one 7-pounder over the summer and thought the fish might match it, but he soon realized it was even bigger. “I went to lip it, and it’s lips were swollen,” he said. “I was like, ‘wow, this fish is big.’”
On the boat’s scale, the fish’s weight hovered around 9 pounds. Piraino fizzed the fish and put it in the livewell. Having caught a lunker, he had his sights set on putting together a bag big enough to qualify for a bid to the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship. And he did so, catching several other sizable fish that day.
BIG FISH = BIG BAG
In the afternoon, Piraino registered a 5-fish bag that came in at 31.4 pounds, by far the biggest of the tournament and one of the biggest bags a solo angler has ever registered in the Empire State.
But perhaps more impressively, when Piraino weighed in his biggest fish of the day, he realized he might have a state record on his hands: the whopper smallmouth came in at 9 pounds, which stands to break the existing record, an 8-pound, 6-ouncer caught in Cayuga Lake in 2022. Piraino’s record is currently pending, as the New York DEC was not able to send a staffer to the tournament to confirm the catch, and Piraino released the fish instead of creeling it so a biologist could weigh it in-person on Monday.
In addition to his impressive catch, Piraino qualified for the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship. “It’s been a long journey,” says Piraino. “My grandfather got me into fishing at a young age, but I haven’t been tournament fishing for that long, and I’ve only been driving a boat for three years. It’s been a lot of hard work and hours put in.”
