Bob Eisele of Leesburg holds up his state-record, 10-pound, 14-ounce largemouth bass. Interestingly, his bass may be one of the few records ever caught from a lake's bank instead of from a boat. Photo courtesy of Bob Eisele.

So you're an avid largemouth bass fisherman living in the Garden State. You watch bass tournaments on TV and participate in local events. You probably even know that George Perry caught the official all-tackle, world-record largemouth bass in Georgia back in 1932. His unbelievable bass weighed in at an astounding 22 pounds, 4 ounces! It was caught on a jointed minnow plug called the Creek Chub Wiggle Fish, a plug that looks like a 4-inch-long yellow perch.

Two other bass nearly as big were caught from Castaic Lake out in California during the 1990s. All of these fish far outweigh New Jersey's record bass. So what does this all mean to you, a Garden State bass enthusiast?

Obviously, hooking the new world-record largemouth is out of the question, but what about the state-record largemouth? Bob Eisele, an avid outdoorsman from Leesburg, caught his 10-pound, 14-ounce state-record bass from the Menantico Sand Wash Pond back in 1980. That's a big bass, no matter where you live, and an amazing catch here in the Garden State. But it's a record that could be broken by some skilled (and lucky) angler who happens to be fishing the right lake at the right time.

Let's take a look at the events that led to Eisele's fine catch and examine several spots where today's fishermen may encounter the new state record.

MENANTICO SAND WASH POND
The Menantico Sand Wash Pond is a series of ponds found in Cumberland County, just off state Route 49. Eisele caught his fish from the largest of these ponds, at 62 acres (really a small lake). All of these ponds are long, narrow and get deep fast. The Menantico Creek feeds into these ponds and empties on the other end into the brackish waters of the Maurice River. These ponds are so deep because they're actually pits left over from sand-mining operations to make glass. Each pond's waters are clear and deep -- not exactly what you'd picture as ideal largemouth habitat.

On that fateful day, Bob Eisele was casting a light 1/8-ounce homemade leadhead bucktail jig, complete with a yellow Mister Twister. Casting from shore, he bounced his jig along the bottom. That's when the lunker largemouth took his lure. "I'm sure I'd caught this bass before, because he'd go deep into a brushpile and break me off," remarked Eisele. "I was using lighter line, maybe 4- to 6-pound-test at first when I visited these ponds, 'cause I was actually after crappies and perch. When I started catching bass, I came back with heavier line in the 12-pound-test range."

The day of his record catch took place in early June after the fish had spawned. Bob Eisele was ready for the lunker's tactics. As soon as the big bass hit, he ran down the shoreline to get it away from a brushpile.

"The bass hogged down deep, and I ran down the bank to get him away from the brushpile," he said. "Naturally, I fell in." But Eisele held on and fought the bass to shore, where he pulled it up onto the bank into some honeysuckle. It was the fastest way to get the bass onto dry land, because he'd forgotten to take along a net. In the end, though, the skilled angler won out, and New Jersey bass-fishing history was made on June 7, 1980.

WHERE WILL THE NEXT RECORD LIKELY COME FROM?
Checking back over the last 25 years' worth of Skillful Angler Award Program's records on bass caught in New Jersey waters doesn't clearly reveal any lake, river or reservoir as THE place to go catch the next state-record largemouth bass. But don't despair, because the next record fish could come from some unlikely water, perhaps an overlooked pond or unlikely lake like my hometown lake of Spring Lake.