N.Y. tournament angler lands pending-record smallmouth bass

Dante Piraino enjoyed a successful day of tournament bass fishing last Sunday in New York, logging a five-fish bag limit totaling 31.4 pounds.

One of those fish – a 9-pound smallmouth bass – is a pending state record.

Piraino, who was participating in a New York Federation B.A.S.S. Nation Tournament in Ogdensburg, landed the smallmouth while casting a soft-plastic lure on the St. Lawrence River.

He told Wired2Fish that he hooked the fish at about 9 a.m. and figured it weighed six pounds.

But when he lipped the smallmouth with his thumb and index finger to hoist it into his live well, he realized that it was “heavier than expected.”

At 9 pounds, heavier than any largemouth bass caught on the same day, the catch eclipses the state record of 8 pounds, 6 ounces, set at Cayuga Lake in 2022.

Piraino, however, is still waiting to hear from the state regarding his potential record, a process that can take weeks.

For comparison, the all-tackle world record for smallmouth bass stands at 11 pounds, 15 ounces. That fish was caught at Tennessee’s Dale Hollow Lake in 1955.