Monster Spotted Bass Tactics with Randall Doyle of Bassaholics

Randall Doyle Battles a GIANT Spotted Bass Caught on a Swimbait – photo by Dan O’Sullivan

Trophy hunters are a unique breed. In their purest form, they are solitary in their pursuit, and their success is completely self gratifying. The most sincere trophy hunters do not seek the limelight, and to ask them to step into the spotlight for their time to shine can be a fruitless pursuit.

Randall Doyle of Redding, Calif. is one of those rare breeds.

An angler in pursuit of trophies of a different nature. While the bulk of the fishing world is focused on largemouth records, Doyle pursues the largest of the spotted bass family. Like the purest hunters before him, he seeks no limelight, but instead seeks the simple gratification of tackling one of his most prized quarry, a trophy spotted bass.

With the recent cresting of the largemouth world record peak by Manubu Kurita on Lake Biwa in Japan, let’s put trophy spotted bass into perspective. Kurita’s largemouth tipped the scales at 22 pounds, 5 ounces, and a 10-pound largemouth is the gold standard for a trophy largemouth bass.

That means that a trophy largemouth is typically recognized when it is around 45-percent of the world record’s weight.

The current world record spotted bass was caught by Bryan Shishido at Pine Flat Lake in California in 201; his fished weighed 10.27 pounds, or just over 10 pounds, 4 ounces.

So, to categorize a true trophy spotted bass, a fish that weighs in at nearly 4 pounds, 8 ounces.

Doyle has pursued true GIANT spotted bass with a fervor on many of the reservoirs around his Northern California home for several years. His personal best is a fish that tipped the scales at 9 pounds, 13 ounces, he has another fish over nine pounds to his credit and five more over eight pounds.

In the past two months, December 2012 and January of 2013, Doyle has boated five spotted bass over seven pounds. So, to put it into perspective for largemouth junkies, he has caught the equivalent of five 18-pound largemouth in the past two months.

In the spirit of a true purist, Doyle has yet to tell me what his true statistics are. I do not know how many true trophy spotted bass he has landed in his life; I can only guess by saying a lot.

This video, is the result of nearly a year of prodding to get him to share some of his exploits as a trophy spotted bass hunter, and while we were not present for the catch, this video includes the release of his fifth seven pound spotted bass in the past two months.

There will be more videos to follow in the future that will be taken from Doyle’s personal stash of videos featuring him on the water doing what he loves. Knowing him, they will be all about the spotted bass, because that is what he is about; the bass, not his own personal recognition.

So, with that in mind, check out some tactics for GIANT spotted bass with Randall Doyle, a true monster spotted bass hunter.

RandallDoyleMonsterSpotTips2500BR from Advanced Angler.com on Vimeo.