As the old saying goes: “third time’s the charm.” That surely was true when 58-year-old fishing guide Chris Senyohl set out May 23 onto the 4,900-acre Lake Sammamish in Bellevue, Washington.
Senyohl, his wife Laney, and friend Tom Wolf were after a heavyweight bedding smallmouth bass that Senyohl had gotten to know very well previously.
“I first saw the fish and caught it on May 12 while fishing with Tom Wolf,” he tells Outdoor Life. “It was near a bass bed in 7 feet of water and I cast to it with a rabbit strip sculpin minnow fly that I tied.”
The bass was very aggressive and slammed his sculpin fly. The bass jumped a few times and fought well. The over 7-pound class smallie was netted and Senyohl was stunned at the fish’s size, since he says Washington isn’t well known for lunker smallmouth bass.
“After I released it I checked the IGFA records and the measurements and was shocked that the bass could have been big enough for an IGFA catch-and-release record,” says Senyohl, who runs Intrepid Anglers Guide Service. “I knew her true overall length from that first encounter with my measure net.”
A week later he returned to the same spot looking for the bedding smallmouth with his wife Laney. Sure enough, he says, the bass was on the same bed. Using another rabbit fur sculpin fly he caught the very aggressive and active smallmouth for a second time.
This time Senyohl had an official IGFA measuring board, and he captured photos of the bass. But the pictures were poor, so he headed back to Lake Sammamish looking for the same bass in the same clear-water spawning area on May 23. This time – his third attempt – he was with his wife Laney and friend Wolf.
This time Senyohl had an official IGFA measuring board and also a small clear container that he made, which he calls a “photo box”. Senyohl says biologists use similar containers to inspect fish, as it ensures fish are not injured for study.
Sure enough, the bass was holding where it had been during the previous two trips.
Senyohl cast the same fly that he calls “Senyohl’s Sculpin”, using a 9-foot, 6-weight Sage fly rod with 15-pound test tippet.
Incredibly, the bass smashed Senyohl’s streamer again, and soon he had the bass in his landing net, and then into his “photo box” full of water.
“She touched glass on both ends of my photo box which is 22.5-inches inside diameter,” he said. “We had to get her onto the IGFA board and measure the length from the fork of the tail to its nose. We had to close its mouth for that measurement, and she didn’t like that.”
After the fish was measured he released the bass in the area where it was caught, once again.
The third time catching the bass is when Senyohl put all the correct measurements and documentation together to submit his catch to IGFA. The world record agency in Florida has now officially recognized Senyohl’s fish as tying the all-tackle world record catch-and-release smallmouth bass at 53 centimeters (20.86 inches).
His fish also qualifies for the fly-only, all-time length record. Both Senyohl’s bass records are ties with several other fish of the same length in each IGFA smallmouth bass category.
Senyohl returned to Lake Sammamish in late June where he’d caught the fish.
“She was still there, though I didn’t try to catch her,” he says. “I know it was the same bass because she has a roughed-up pectoral fin that’s easy to identify and her color pattern is recognizable, too.
“I’m glad she’s safe, and next year I’ll go back and try to catch her again when she’s bigger and maybe break my own records.”
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