It rained in south Georgia on June 2, 1932. That's why a 20-year-old George W. Perry went fishing with friend Jack Page instead of working the fields on the family farm.
It rained again on Saturday, as the 75th anniversary of the feat that Perry pulled off that day was commemorated with the dedication of a roadside marker by the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division (GWRD).
In the photo at right, Dazy Perry prepares to cast a Creek Chub lure into Montgomery Lake, a nondescript oxbow off of the Ocmulgee River. When his father did the same thing 75 years earlier, it resulted in a 22-04 largemouth bass that still stands as the world record.
According to Dazy, the Creek Chub (it was probably a Wigglefish, but might have been a Fintail Shiner) was one of only two lures that his father owned at that point during the Great Depression. When the big fish hit, he thought he'd gotten the lure hung up on an underwater stump.
Not hardly. Instead, he'd hooked up with fishing history.
"The story of the world record largemouth bass catch has a wonderful ‘everyman’ quality to it, making it easy for people to identify with George W. Perry," GWRD director Dan Forster said at the ceremony.
Interestingly, the fish that Perry’s catch replaced in the record book – a 20-13 hawg from Florida’s Big Fish Lake, also fell to a Creek Chub lure. The Florida fish bit a Creek Chub Pikie, which later became one of Perry’s favorites and is still a popular big-fish bait today.
