It was late May on southern Minnesota’s 1,360-acre Lura Lake, and Andy Kilen was enjoying a spring morning of fishing with his two grandsons Gabriel and Elijah Schouten. They’d launched Andy’s 16-foot Ranger boat into the lake that morning and had caught a few fish. Soon they would make Minnesota bass fishing history.
“The lake is really weedy and has a nice population of northern pike and largemouth bass,” Kilen tells Outdoor Life. “We used 3/8-ounce spinnerbaits because it’s so weedy, and we caught a few small pike on those lures. My grandson also caught a huge 26-inch walleye on spinnerbait – first one I think we ever caught from the lake, and we work it several times every year.”
It was early afternoon when Andy made a cast with an orange spinnerbait with big Colorado-style blades. He started a quick retrieve, keeping the lure near the surface and above weeds.
He was using baitcasting tackle, 15-pound test braided line with an 80-pound test fluorocarbon leader (for the lake’s abundant and toothy pike).
“It was really shallow, about five feet of water, and not far from the bank when the fish hit” says Kilen, age 76, from Rochester, Minnesota. “I knew it was a big bass, and it was lots of fun fighting it. It never jumped, though, and it was pretty interesting keeping it out of the weeds when I got it near my boat.”
Gabriel netted the bass and got excited about how fat it was – likely a female ripe with roe as the largemouth spawn was underway in southern Minnesota’s abundant lakes.
“I have a measuring scale on the handle of my landing net, and Gabriel made a couple fast photos of the fish against the handle,” Kilen says. “Then we unhooked the bass and released it – like we do with almost all fish we catch.”
After they released the largemouth they started thinking that perhaps the fish may have been a state record. Minnesota initiated a catch-and-release category for state fish in 2024, and the largemouth bass category was open with no entries.
“We didn’t get the best photos of my bass against the landing net handle showing its length,” explained Andy. “We had it at 23 inches long and sent those photos and other information required to the state for certification. They granted me the record, and used 22.5 inches long for it, which is fine by me, since it’s still a Minnesota record catch.”
They didn’t weigh Andy’s bass, but the anglers believe it could have weighed up to 9 pounds. Several widely accepted length-to-weight conversion charts offer a broad range of weights the fish could have been – from 5.5 pounds to 8.5 pounds.
Andy’s bass had a thick body with a swollen belly, showing the fish obviously was full of spawn. So, it may well have scaled 9 pounds.
The Minnesota state record weight largemouth caught in 2005 by angler Mark Raveling from Carver County’s Auburn Lake weighed 8 pounds, 15 ounces. That fish had a 23.5-inch length and a 17.5-inch girth.
Andy’s bass was within that size range, and indeed may have challenged the state record largemouth bass for weight, too.
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But Andy says he’s more than happy to have the now official Minnesota first catch-and-release largemouth record – and he may have a replica mount made of his fish.
“We haven’t been back to Lura Lake since I caught that bass in May,” he says. “It’s really choked with weeds in summer. But I think we’ll go back this fall, after the weeds begin dying and we can fish it well.”
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