Entry 214-1
James Niggemeyer – Strike King’s Rising Star
Part 1: How to Land the Big One
Editor’s Note: The first part of August 2007, James Niggemeyer of Van, Texas, tied for the biggest bass caught in the Bassmasters Elite Series’ Capitol Clash tournament on the Potomac River at Washington D.C. Out of 107 of the best pros in the nation, Niggemeyer finished in 16th place, winning $10,000 and an additional $1,000 for catching the biggest bass. He was only 1-1/2-pounds and one bass away from making the 12th-place cut on the final day. During Niggemeyer’s rookie year on the Bassmasters Elite Series trail, he’s done extremely well. This week, he’ll tell us how he fished on the Potomac and what his life’s been like since making the move from amateur fisherman to full-time pro angler.
Question: James, tell us about catching the biggest bass during your most-recent tournament on the Potomac River.
Niggemeyer: I was fishing a creature bait on the second day of the tournament at my first stop. I’d caught bass on a small creature bait in matted grass, flipping a 1-ounce weight into heavy vegetation and using my bait to punch through the grass. I was using a 7-foot, 6-inch Allstar Team TAS 907 rod and a PFluger Presidential baitcasting reel on 65-pound-test braided line. The majority of the grass was milfoil with several other varieties of mixed grass in it. I’d been fishing for about 15 minutes and hadn’t gotten a bite when my creature bait broke through the grass and fell to the bottom.
When I lifted my lure off the bottom, the lure felt heavy. I knew there were no logs or brush there and that a bass must be holding my lure in its mouth. So, I set the hook hard. However, the fish wouldn’t move very much. Because I knew there wasn’t much room in the thick vegetation for the fish to move to the left or the right, so I pinned the bass to the vegetation to keep it from jumping or moving. I knew this was a quality fish, but I didn’t realize it weighed 8 pounds. The Potomac River isn’t known for producing big bass, so I was surprised that this bass was so large. I thought the bass might weigh 5 pounds. 
I kept pulling the fish to get it to a point where I could land it. The bass looked subdued, like it wouldn’t fight, so I reached down to lip the fish.
The grass came free from the bass at the same time that I tried to lip it, and the fish went ballistic as soon as I removed it from the grass. The bass dove for the bottom and went under the boat. I had way too much line out. I tried to retrieve the line and fight the bass while I was sitting in the seat. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Steve Kennedy, who was watching me fight this fish, said, “You looked pretty awkward trying to fight a big bass while sitting in the seat of your boat.” When I got the bass out from under the boat, the fish jumped right beside the boat, and my 1-ounce tungsten lead hit the side of the boat so hard that it sounded like a bullet hitting fiberglass. The bass hit the side of the boat and then dove again for the bottom. Finally, the fish came back beside the boat, and I grabbed its lower jaws. Although it felt like the fight lasted for days, the struggle was over in a few moments.
You really don’t want to fight a bass as close to your boat and in water as shallow as I did, and you don’t want to sit in the cockpit while trying to land a big bass. I knew everything I was doing was wrong, but I was doing my best with the present situation. 
Once I pulled the bass into the boat, I placed it in my live well without looking at it very closely. I had no idea it weighed 8 pounds, 2 ounces, which ended up tying for first place in the tournament’s big-fish competition. The Potomac River wasn’t known in the past for producing big bass. In the end, Gary Klein and I each had an 8-pound, 2-ounce bass, and Brian Snowden had a 7-pound, 13-ounce bass. Many people in the Washington D.C. area believe that the increase of vegetation on the river has really helped the bass grow.
