During a weekend that was all about big fish at Lake of the Ozarks, Kathy and Dan Swan brought in the biggest catch of all.
Fishing Oct. 1 in the Big Bass Bash that paid the winner $100,000, Kathy cast a Brush Hog to the edge of a condo boat dock and immediately felt a hit.
When she set the hook, she thought she was hung up on a cable. “But then that cable started to swim,” she said with a laugh.
She fought the monster for 10 minutes, then handed the rod to her husband Dan, who fought the fish for another 10 minutes.
That’s when the fish finally surfaced and they realized what they had – a giant Asian carp.
They tied their catch to the boat and towed it to a weigh-in station. Once it was lifted onto the scale, the Swans found that they had landed a 71.82-pound fish.
That was a great sideshow for spectators, but worth nothing but a few memories for the Swans, who live in Osage Beach, Mo.
This was a big-bass tournament, not a big-carp event, remember?
“I was using a Loomis rod and it was bent over to the water,” Kathy said. “I My first thought was that I didn’t want to break that rod.
“I fought it for 10 minutes, and I was exhausted. That’s when Dan took over.”