When I took a surprise call from my lifelong friend and fishing buddy Gregg Gallagher ,I never would have dreamed what would have taken place over the next couple hours. Below is his first statement on the event and a video showing the largest smallmouth ever caught in real time and explaining what happened.

01:11 Fish Catch Video
03:07 Interview with Greg Gallagher
14:30 Play By Play of Fish Catch
17:00 Travis Harman ODNR on certification process

Here are Gregg Gallagher's thoughts:

"On Nov 3rd my son Grant and I, both teachers, woke up with a surprise day off due to fog. The flat calm conditions were the perfect situation for our Bass Cat boat to travel wherever we desired on the Western end of Lake Erie. The goal was to catch a giant smallmouth bass, 7lbs or better.

For many years my son and I primarily chased the local popular species of walleye. Looking for something different we spent several years trying a variety of techniques to catch walleye by casting and jigging and not with the preferred trolling methods. This eventually lead us to spend more and more time specifically targeting bass. This desire grew even greater when Grant spent four years on the Adrian College Bass team.

The countless time Grant has spent scouting, graphing and working on fine tuning our smallmouth techniques all paid off when he located what we both knew was a unique and likely unfished spot. With an abundance of baitfish located and a unique bottom content found via long days behind the graphs, we dropped down our forward facing sonar and were able to individually target these pelagic smallmouth.

On what turned out to be the most memorable cast of my life, my bait got hit before it even hit the bottom, and my rod quickly doubled over. I honestly thought I had hooked into a sheep head and not a smallmouth. We quickly learned we had just caught the smallmouth of a lifetime. After a quick weight in the boat, we knew the fish was approaching at least 9 lbs and we immediately started to think of what we needed to do if it was.

With a few phone calls and a great amount of help from lifelong friend Ross Robertson @bigwaterfishing, we needed to get the weight verified on an official scale. After a few more phone calls we, were able to meet Travis Hartman (Lake Erie Fisheries Program Administrator for the Ohio DNR) and take the proper steps to apply for the record.

Once the legalities and paperwork are finished, it will be the new Ontario Province record smallmouth bass, breaking a 68 year record. 

I think the video of both of us screaming like school girls over what ended up being the largest documented smallmouth ever caught on the Great Lakes says it all. The ability to do it with my son who has become the Captain of the boat and a much better fisherman than me, made it even more special.

When it was all said and done the official weight was 10.15lbs and measured 23 ¾ x19 3/8.

A huge thank you goes out to Crown Battery, St. Bonore Financial Services and Clemons Boats/Bass Cat for allowing my son and me to hunt these giant smallmouths prowling the Great Lakes. "

~Gregg Gallagher

Capt. Ross Robertson has made his complete living chasing walleye as a full time professional angler for more than 20 years. Through the years he has worn many hats including time as a fishing guide, boat salesman, TV host, outdoor writer, product designer, tournament fisherman, speaker, radio host and podcaster to name a few.
Ross fishes ice-out to ice-up on the Great Lakes. He spends the majority of the year walleye fishing on Lake Erie’s Western and Central basins.

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