Arizona bass fisherman Steve Jenkins was fishing a local tournament on Roosevelt Lake over the weekend when he caught and released what should be the new state-record largemouth bass. The fish hardly fit in his livewell, and it weighed 16.57 pounds on certified scales, which floored everyone else at the tourney.
This included Jenkins, who’d severely underestimated the fish’s weight before bringing it to the weigh-in. And because he was more concerned with keeping the fish alive than certifying a record, he released the monster bass right after the weigh-in — instead of bringing it to officials with the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Jenkins says the bass still has a chance of making the record book, and that he and the tournament director have been communicating with AZGFD to see about getting his record certified after the fact.
“My goal was just to keep the fish alive,” Jenkins tells Outdoor Life. “If Game and Fish has to see it [in person], and they don’t give me the record, then it is what it is. I just wanted to see that fish go back.”
Jenkins, 55, is a weekend-warrior tournament angler who mostly competes in local derbies. On Aug. 3, he fished in a 38-boat, one-day tournament on Roosevelt Lake with his partner Mike Selvage. The two took off in the middle of the pack a little after 5 a.m. Their first couple spots didn’t produce.
“We actually headed to a different spot that I hadn’t been to in awhile, because the water level had dropped,” says Jenkins, who’s learned to adapt to the changing reservoir as its water levels go up and down. “So, we actually just pulled over and stopped, sort of spur of the moment, and we started catching fish right away.”
Jenkins explains that he marked a few fish on his forward-facing sonar when they first pulled up. It was a flat spot with some structure near a drop off, and some time around 7 a.m., he hooked and broke off a huge fish on a ¼ oz. dropshot rig. He tied on a fresh one, using a 7-pound leader and a 6-inch roboworm rigged on a thin-wire 1/0 hook.
“It was down there for maybe 30 seconds, and I just felt weight. I never even felt the fish bite,” Jenkins says. “But as soon as I set the hook, it started ripping drag.”
Selvage immediately reeled up and grabbed the net. They chased the fish with their trolling motor pointed toward the east, and when the fish jumped, the two anglers could just make out its giant profile in the sun. Selvage yelled out something about a “10-pounder,” and after a few more deep runs, Jenkins fought the fish to the net.
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At that point, the two anglers still had a lot of tournament left, and Jenkins was already worried about keeping the fish alive for that long. The tournament director wouldn’t let them weigh it early, so Jenkins put the bass in its own separate livewell, where it barely fit. At that point, he guessed the largemouth was around 12 pounds.
Although the two kept fishing until the weigh-in at 11 a.m., Jenkins says his main focus was on keeping the huge bass alive. He says he fizzed it twice throughout the morning, and at one point he stopped at a marina to get some ice and cool the livewell down. Jenkins had also briefly shown the fish to one of his buddies on the water — “Dude, that’s a teener,” he said — and by the time they got back to the boat ramp, word was out. Everyone lined up, phones and cameras in hand, to watch Jenkins carry the fish with two hands to the certified scale at the weigh station, where it registered 16.57 pounds (or 16 pounds, 9.12 ounces).
This was enough to outweigh the standing Arizona largemouth record by more than two ounces. But Jenkins says the record still hadn’t crossed his mind — even though an angler in one of the videos clearly asks: “Is that a state record?”
“You can hear him on video saying that, but we kind of just ignored it. I don’t even think I heard it, to be honest,” says Jenkins, who along with Selvage placed second in the tournament. “I was just in shock.”
Jenkins says he and the tournament director were still talking with AZGFD officials as of Tuesday. He thinks that with all the photographs, video evidence, and witnesses they have, there’s a chance that the agency will still certify his 16.57-pounder as the new hook-and-line Arizona record — or potentially as a catch-and-release record. The important thing, he says, is that the fish is still alive and kicking somewhere in Roosevelt Lake.
“The intention was always to release it. I would have hated to kill that fish,” Jenkins says. “And it was good … She swam off strong.”