Hey Hall of Fame family,
I hope you all survived the snow and ice storm that rattled much of the east coast! Per usual, we've received several inches of snow this winter and had only a day or two above freezing temperatures for about a month. It has been so cold, in fact, the first Bassmaster Elite Series tournament of 2026 kicked off this at Lake Guntersville, and anglers have had to deal with much of the lake being frozen during practice. That doesn't happen often in Alabama!
In our last blog post, Paul and I recapped some of our favorite moments on the water from 2025, and there were some good ones! Check it out here: Best of 2025 – Hall of Fame Outdoor Co. In this post, I wanted to tell a surprising story about one of my PBs. It happened while bass fishing and was not that long ago. I was truly not expecting to catch this species, or a PB!
Let's set the scene. It was mid-November, 2025. Fall in Missouri was winding down, and most of the leaves had already dropped off the trees. Days were getting shorter, and winter was about to rear its ugly head. It was a little warmer than normal one Friday, so I decided to relish the last hour or so of sunlight I had after work. What better way to do this than go fishing? There are actually several lakes, creeks, ponds, and a river within a 10-minute drive from the office, but I have a couple spots that I frequent more regularly than others.
The pond I chose to fish was one I've been going to since high school. This thing is basically a drainage ditch where a busy road meets the back end of a neighborhood. It is incredibly grassy and shallow, with much of the pond being less than three feet deep. Its small, and the entire thing can be thoroughly fished in an hour. Most of the pond's embankments are steep though, and landing a big fish without a net proved to be quite challenging. Up until this point in my life, I had only caught largemouth there, and the biggest fish I've caught there was 3 lbs on a KVD frog. It is more of a numbers pond, but that is still fun sometimes. That evening, I was throwing a houdini colored Zman Original chatterbait, just targeting the abundant 1-to-2-pound bass who call that glorified drainage ditch home.
There are two spots on this pond that almost always hold bass, and there are spots on this pond where I have never caught a fish. The first "good" spot is a long piece of rebar that sticks up vertical through the water column. I'd guess it's about 7 or 8 feet deep here. It's not far from where I park the truck, so I usually begin fishing my way towards it. Per usual, I caught a small bass or two off that rebar before continuing down the lake.
I rounded the bend, skipping past much of the shallow, leaf and grass filled corner of the pond. I landed another bass off the only point on the lake and eventually started working my way to the next "good" spot, that being the next corner of the pond. This corner is deeper than much of the surrounding water and has cypress tree roots that extend into the lake. I made a far cast from that point towards the cypress roots and felt something heavy on my line after two turns of the reel. I set the hook and immediately knew I did not have a bass. At first, I had no idea what I'd hooked; I thought it was a big catfish.
Within a second of setting the hook, this goliath blasted off towards the other side of the lake. There was little I could do to stop it from running, and I felt under-gunned on my 7'3" medium heavy casting rod with 20 lb. braid. The fish was peeling drag off my Lew's Speed Spool like nothing, resulting in one of the seldom time's I've tightened drag on a baitcaster whilst fighting a fish. This beast had explosive power, going on long, telltale runs all the way across the pond. After fighting it for what seemed like 10 minutes, I was finally able to ID the fish, and it was one of the last species I was expecting... A silver carp, and a huge one!
I was shocked, not even knowing silver carp inhabited the pond. I knew there were carp there but was never able to ID the species due to turbidity. There is a creek that is a tributary of the Missouri River that runs nearby, so I am assuming the carp escaped into the pond during a flooding event. I foul hooked the invasive silver carp in the tail, which further explains why I felt outgunned by that fish. I fought it another 10 minutes or so, as I debated how I was going to land this thing from the top of a steep bank. Without a net. I settled on a spot close to the cypress trees. It was slightly flatter, but far from horizontal. I fought the fish to the bank and tried to grab its tail, before it kicked off away from me. This happened a few times, as the fish's tail was too big to grip both of my hands around. I then tried to hold one hand on the tail and reach the other hand up to the mouth. The problem with this strategy: this silver carp was longer than my arm span! I could not even reach the gill plate while holding the tail. And because it was hooked in the tail, I couldn't get this fish turned around at all, making landing this carp even more challenging. If only I had a friend or net with me!
By now, I'd had this fish on for well over 20 minutes, and I could not land this fish to save my life. After several failed attempts, the carp blasted off away from me for the umpteenth time, turning the already stained water even muddier. Ultimately, I decided to just give up on landing the massive filter feeder. I unhooked its tail and watched it wearily swim away. If I had to guess, that invasive fish was probably 25 lbs. and 30+ inches long, easily a PB silver carp. Here in the Midwest, they can grow up to around 50 inches and weigh over 60 lbs.
Looking back, I think it might've been physically impossible for me to land that fish by myself without getting in the water. I wish I could've gotten a better photo and a closer look at it on land, but I really think there wasn't much I could do. I wasn't prepared for or expecting to catch a fish of that size. That silver carp was the most unexpected fish, let alone PB that I have ever caught!
I hope you enjoyed this story, thanks for reading. Tight lines!
-Erik Hoffman, Hall of Fame Outdoor Co
