"Magzumi" Lands Trophy

24 inches long with a 22-inch girth !!

What Maggie Boyer thought was a lousy cast turned out to be her best.

Boyer, of Bracebridge, Ontario, was fishing out of a 14-foot canoe with her husband, Ed Hiltz, on a small lake near Haliburton on Oct. 7 when her miscast resulted in what could be the biggest largemouth bass ever caught in Ontario.

"It was a lousy cast," Boyer said. "I was farther out away from the weeds than I would have like to have been. I was probably over 20 feet of water. Then he went chomp. It wasn't more like a hit, it was suddenly I had this big weight on."

"He just kept staying down," Boyer added. "He took a little line and he'd go down again. We didn't even know what we had on. We thought it was a turtle or something."

It wasn't a turtle. After 30 minutes Boyer landed the fish of a lifetime - a largemouth bass that measured 24 inches long with a 22-inch girth. Catch and release calculators show a fish with these measurements weighs anywhere from 10 to 13 pounds, depending on the website and calculator used. The Ontario record largemouth bass is currently 10.43 pounds.

Boyer, however, did not meet the criteria for a catch-and-release record.

"It was awful big," Boyer said. "We had it measured out in the bottom of the canoe. It was 24 inches long. We figured we had a whopper. I went to a website and put the measurements in and found out it was a record for Ontario. I didn't have the tape measure beside it in the photos so it can't be logged as a record. But I'm going to catch him next year!"

Boyer caught her trophy on a Cotton Cordell Grappler Shad in Gold Perch that was purchased at a Canadian Tire store in Bracebridge. The Grappler Shad is a 2 7/8" crankbait that dives 6 to 8-feet on retrieve. "We picked it out because of the color and the price was more reasonable," Boyer said. "It's the color that attracts them."

Although the big bass came from a lake that is only about a square mile in size, Boyer's receiving the kind of notoriety usually reserved for famed anglers like Bob Izumi.

Boyer said she plans on catching her trophy again next year, but in the meantime she's enjoying her newfound celebrity.

"People are calling me Magzumi," Boyer said. "That fish has received a lot of attention."