For the record: The world biggest largemouth bass

If you don't know who George Perry was, you're probably not a bass angler.

For those who consider the largemouth to be the only fish worth pursuing, Perry is sort of the George Washington of the Bass Nation.

You see, for the past 77 years Perry has held the world record for largemouths - 22 pounds, 4 ounces - for a fish caught from Montgomery Lake near Lumber City, Ga., roughly southeast of Macon.

Little was known about the catch for decades. Perry didn't promote himself, and in the Depression era of 1932, bass were pursued for food, not glory. But with the tremendous increase in recreational bass fishing over the past 40 years, Perry's catch has loomed ever larger.

Now, Bill Baab, former outdoors editor of The Augusta Chronicle, has written a book, "Remembering George W. Perry," devoted to Perry and his record fish.

Baab is sort of the unofficial historian of the catch. He has spent his life chasing fish in Perry's home state and became an avid fan of the catch when he was a boy. The book encapsulates all of Baab's many years of building the legend of the world-record largemouth.

Baab also wrote extensively about Fritz Friebel, who caught the Florida-record largemouth bass from a private lake near San Antonio. That fish - 20 pounds, 2 ounces - would have been the record until recent years had Perry not made his catch. Of course, some say that because it was a Florida-strain largemouth and Perry's fish was thought to be a northern strain, the records are separate.

Perry's story is fairly straightforward. According to Baab, Perry and a pal went fishing in Montgomery Lake, an oxbow of the Ocmulgee River, on June 2, 1932. Fishing a Creek Chub fantail shiner - or maybe it was a Creek Chub Wigglefish; the record is foggy - on 24-pound-test South Bend line and a baitcasting reel, he dredged up a bass that was 32.5 inches long and had an incredible 28.5-inch girth.

There are very few photos of the fish, but one Baab has included in the book shows a bug-eyed monster with a stomach the size of a basketball and a head that would barely fit into a five-gallon bucket.

Though there have, in recent years, been anglers who have spent years and tens of thousands of dollars attempting to catch a world-record bass, Perry caught his monster largely by accident, according to Baab. The anglers were fishing for food on a day when rain had made the fields too muddy to plow. They caught not a single fish from dawn until 4 p.m. But when visiting a final spot, a floating tree, Perry's lure was inhaled by the monster.

It was taken to a store in Helena, his hometown, and weighed in on commercial market scales and certified by a notary public, which later would be the key to Perry getting the record. And after that? The million-dollar bass was eaten without further ceremony, half of it one night, half over the next two nights.

Perry died in an airplane crash at age 61 and was not around in his latter years to enjoy the limelight, but his family had a fiberglass mount made to the specifications of the record fish. It was a stupendous bass if the mount is accurate; the mouth could easily have inhaled a full-grown mallard.

In recent years, a number of Florida bass and Florida/northern hybrid bass, mostly caught in deep reservoirs in California, have come close to matching the record. Baab said because these fish are not true northern strain, they shouldn't be considered for the all-tackle mark.

The International Game Fish Association disagrees. It lists Florida fish alongside pure northern strain in its line-class records, and there are three fish more than 20 pounds in the lineup at present, plus a pending fish from Japan that might tie the record. That fish, caught in July, was weighed in at 22 pounds, 4 ounces from a lake where Florida bass have been stocked for years.

Baab details this catch and many other near misses in his book. "Remembering George W. Perry" costs $19.95, plus shipping, from www.whitefishpress.com.