BY MIKE STEVENS
CHULA VISTA – A lot of stars had to align for Chula Vista angler Andres “Andy” Guzman to even get on the water on what would turn out to be a bass-of-a-lifetime day on Lower Otay Reservoir. He was about halfway through a 16-hour cook on a brisket he put in the night before for a party that night and one of his kids woke up early with a bloody nose, and his wife encouraged him to get out and fish.
And fish he did.
“I launched, got to my first spot, tossed my bait out there and hooked up to some vegetation,” Guzman told Western Outdoor News. “On my fourth cast of the morning, I hooked into something I knew was good. There was a tule point with some other vegetation around on the dam side of Otay, and I put that bait right on the tules. Any closer and it would have got snagged on the tules, and she bit four cranks in.”
Guzman was working with 20-pound Sunline fluorocarbon and an “ex heavy” rod rated for 3 -to 8-ounce lures, 50- to 80-pound braid, and this fish had it “doubled over and straight down.”
He said “when I looked down and saw her mouth, I was like ‘oh my God’ because this was for sure going to be the biggest fish of my life.” He forgot his net and had to hand-line the fish up to the boat and lift her aboard. Guzman told WON he had an old Rapala scale he wasn’t convinced was very accurate, so he put the fish in the livewell and cruised to another part of the lake where he knew some buddies who had a better scale were fishing.
The Rapala scale read 15-pounds, 11-ounces, so Guzman at least knew he had a 15-plus-pound largemouth. It wasn’t far off, as the newer Bubba Pro Series scale read 15-9. His previous personal-best bass was a 9.1 caught at El Capitan Reservoir.
After bagging that fish at 6:45 a.m and weighing it, Guzman carefully returned her to the spot where it was caught, hung around to make sure it was alright and called it a day.
The bait was a 9-inch Hinkle Shad that has a story of its own. Guzman met Andrew Hinkle while playing softball over a dozen years ago, and they became friends and would talk fishing. Knowing Hinkle’s baits are hard to come by at times, Guzman asked about getting one out of his next batch. Later, they ran into each other at a Padres game where Hinkle had Guzman keep an eye out for an extra jersey that was the giveaway at that game. Guzman just gave him his own, and later as a payback, Hinkle set a Hinkle Shad to his house.
The bait sat for a while before Guzman decided to get it painted in a shad pattern, and he sent it back east to “Little River Lure Lady” (instagram.com/littleriverlurelady). She gave it an incredibly lifelike look based on a shad photo Guzman provided, and she included a “thank you” note that said, “I hope you catch the world record!”
Due to the positive nature of every step of this particular bait being first obtained and then custom painted, Guzman started referring it to it as the “Hinkle Karma Shad.”
Clearly the karma was real as Guzman now has a tough-to-beat personal best, he’s set the trophy-bass bar crazy high early in this new year, and anglers throughout the state are going to have a hell of a time trying to beat it.
