My older sister is severely mentally handicapped and when we were kids my parents would take us farm pond fishing. She couldn't be trusted with a hook so dad found a long stick, tied a piece of string on it with a clothes pin on the end. She was splashing it around on the corner of the pond dam and started screaming. I looked over there and she was dragging about a 3 pound bass up on the bank that had hit the clothes pin and got it lodged in his mouth.

SE Kansas grass grower

Some years back, I was bank fishing at Tyler State Park. That afternoon a fellow had his nice Skeeter out on the lake in the park, and was throwing a whacky worm, and kept missing bass. The man just could not get a hook-up.

Anywho, this fellow had carried his little girl with him. She was in the back with her Barbie pole, and a cooler full of those foil pouch fruit drinks, and a big bag of Puffed Cheetos. The little girl was fishing live worms at the end of a bobber. She keeps asking her dad to bait here hook with a crawler, but he's just TOTALLY fixated on the bass he keeps missing.

Finally. the girl pulls out a cheeto and stares at it a bit, and then proceds to bait her hook with it; hooking it in the middle. She cast it out near where there's a sharp drop off from the shore, and in less than a minute the bobber is just yank under. A nice bass comes to the surface as she's fighting it and does a bit of a tail walk, and then goes on to put up quite the scrap.

I'd guess that that bass ran just over five pounds.

So now when folks as me will catch bass; I say you can catch bass whacky-worming a Cheeto if the mood strike them(the bass).

TFP

5 lbs on a Barbie rod and reel?

You serious, Clark?