I have scoured the internet on several occasions in search of an old advertisement that offered up the tagline “there’s big fish in Iowa” or something quite similar. I want to say that it was a tourism spot but could very well have been pitching a product of some sort.

Just don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ve had some difficulty finding those big fish so it is not only the advertisement search that has proven elusive. I’ve only been fishing Iowa waters since June 2016 and exclusively on the relatively new Lost Grove Lake so my attempts have been rather limited. To date, my personal best Iowa bass is a 2-3 from June 2017 among the 106 bass in the log from just under 40 hours of casting in The Hawkeye State.

The clip below represents the Top Iowa Bass for 2018, not a particularly impressive specimen but worthy of a video highlight nonetheless.

Even though I have yet to fool anything real special on Lost Grove, I still plan on giving it another shot in 2019. The proximity of a 25-minute drive makes it a good after work weekday trip once the summer days get long. A couple evening hours hits the spot and I do know that some good ones do indeed prowl that water. I’ve seen a couple on internet reports as well as several firsthand swimming in the waters.

But the toughest one to take was a 4-pounder that a fellow nabbed from the bank within a cast of my boat and right where I was headed. Tough luck for me as he simply got there first. Initially a little bummed, I took a mental step back, congratulated him on the catch and even assisted him by loaning my pliers and snapping a couple pics for him with his phone.

Best of all, that fish is still swimming, right alongside my 2-3 Iowa personal best as they were both caught in the same area. And as both were fooled in 2017, they’ll have two more years of growing under their belts for 2019 (yes, I do know bass do not wear belts). Talk to you later. Troy