Ken Cook has a fish story to tell, and it's a whopper

“We had a good morning catching a couple of dozen smallish bass from shallow water. We were fishing clear water making long casts with spinning tackle: Abu Garcia Villain medium heavy rods with Abu Garcia spinning reels loaded with 8-pound test Nanofil line.

“This line allows extremely long casts with light weight lures. We used a 1/8 oz. tungsten sinker and 3/0 offset VMC hook rigged with a 3-inch Berkley Chigger Craw.

“The long cast was important as the fish were very spooky in the clear water. The bass took my bait at the end of a very long cast and dived for deep water. I knew it was big, but not until it tried to jump and we saw it did its size become apparent.

“After a couple of minutes of tiring the fish, it went into some submerged vegetation and near a brush pile and finally allowed us to put our hands in her huge mouth. The fish was fairly thin and appeared to be at least partially spent from spawning.

“Didn't measure it, but weighed it on a Berkley hand-held scale at 11-6. It's the biggest one I have caught in Oklahoma and the second biggest ever after fishing all over the United States and several foreign countries.

“I am not saying exactly where I caught it.”