‘I Wouldn’t Kill That Bass.’ Tournament Angler Reveals Possible State Record for Smallmouth

Dante Piraino already had a pair of 2-pound smallmouth bass in his boat’s livewell when he hooked a big fish in 30 feet of water at 9 a.m. Sunday. Piraino was competing in a qualifying tournament on New York’s St. Lawrence River, and he really needed to make some weight to move up the rankings.

“I knew it was a good bass, but I thought it was only 6 pounds,” the 25-year-old says Outdoor living. “I couldn’t get the fish up easily. It didn’t jump, but it eventually came up three or four times, where I could see it was a giant. I had trouble getting it into my net because it was so big.”

Piraino was fishing alone that morning, the second and final day of a New York BASS Nation tournament. He worked the smallmouth into his net and saw how big the fish really was, but at that moment he was more concerned with his final score than the fish’s actual weight.

“I never thought about it being a record,” says Piraino, who Deep River Technologiesa marine electronics company. “I just wanted to make sure I caught 30-plus pounds of bass that day to qualify for the next tournament.”

Read more: The biggest bass ever caught

Piraino says he immediately “fizzes” the bass, which involves using a special tool to puncture the air bladder inside the fish. This helps decompress the fish and improves their chances of survival after being quickly pulled from deep water.

“I fried it and put it back in the living quarters of my boat and the fish righted itself,” he said. “That’s when I knew it was good. I checked it 10 minutes later and all morning and the fish was fine.”

The calm day was warming up, and Piraino knew he had to keep the fish alive and well. He still had a 75-mile boat ride back to the competition weigh station in Ogdensburg. Earlier that morning, he had taken his 19-foot Skeeter up the St. Lawrence from Ogdensburg to an area known as Cape Vincent. He was familiar with the spot, having recently discovered a deeper flat that held fish using his Garmin LiveScope.

“Without my LiveScope, I would have never known there were bass on that flat,” he said. “But a couple days before, I had spotted a couple of big ones, and I checked them out during the tournament and went out and caught them. They were solo, and I was catching one every 20 or 30 minutes.”

Piraino used a 4-inch Berkley Flat Nose Minnow soft plastic bait in pumpkin green on a 3/8-ounce Ned Rig. His spinning gear included 10-pound test braided line tied to a 10-pound fluorocarbon leader.

He fished all day. By the end of the match, Piraino had amassed an impressive bag of two 5-pounders and two 6-pounders, in addition to the lunker he had caught that morning. He would not know how big that fish was until he walked an hour back to the weigh-in, where officials weighed his 31.4-pound bag on certified scales in front of a crowd of witnesses.

“When they said [the big bass] weighed nine pounds, a lot of people started booing and yelling and saying it was a state record,” Piraino said. “I had no idea it was that big or could be a record until then.”

He then called the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, but they told him no one was available to inspect the fish.

“They suggested that I put the bass on ice and have the state guys weigh and measure it that Monday,” Piraino says. “But I wasn’t going to kill that bass. So we got the official weight, the measurements, lots of photos and witnesses, and we released it, like we should have.”

Piraino’s bass weighed in at an even 9 pounds, with a girth of 18.25 inches, a length of 23.12 inches. His bass easily surpasses the current New York smallie record, an 8-pound 6-ounce fish caught in 2022.

Read more: Tournament angler catches same smallmouth bass record two years in a row

Proper paperwork and official verification of Piraino’s catch are required before it is certified as a New York State record. Since it was weighed on the same certified scales used by BASS Nation judges, it is almost certain that this will happen. But even if the record doesn’t come true, Piraino has earned the respect of the local bass fishing community, with countless anglers applauding his decision to keep the fish alive, even if it meant losing the record and all the influence that comes with it.

“I think I should have a replica of that 9-pounder gun made,” says Piraino, “because we don’t see one of those every day.”