Big Show’s Best Was His Worst

Terry Scroggins' 'catch 22', literally.

It’s a feat that better than 99 percent of all bass anglers will never experience. But we can dream about it — catching 5 bass that weigh a total of 44 pounds. Each keeper bass you land in the dream will average nearly 9 pounds.

For Toyota Tundra pro Terry Scroggins, it was reality. He didn’t dream about it. Instead, at Falcon Lake, Texas, during the third event of the 2008 Bassmaster Elite Series Season, Scroggins lived it.

In the biggest slugfest in the history of professional bass fishing events, Big Show threw the biggest five-fish punch of the week. He brought a bag of bass to the scales on Day 4 that weighed 44 pounds 4 ounces, bringing his four-day total to 132 pounds, 4 ounces. But after all that, he fell less than a pound short of setting a new BASS single-day catch record in the 5-bass-limit era and lost the tournament by just four ounces. It was bass fishing’s best example of having it all and still losing it.

In Big Show’s mind it’s especially bittersweet because of dead boat batteries and two big bass that got away. “What people don’t know is that I had absolutely no use of my trolling motor for about 20 percent of that tournament because of battery issues on Day 1 and Day 2,” said Scroggins. “To make matters worse, on Day 2, I lost a 10-pounder.” And here’s the final blow. Twenty minutes before his last cast on Day 4, Scroggins lost yet another 10-pounder, much like the giant that escaped him two days earlier.

So, the ever-upbeat Scroggins picked Falcon Lake as the one tournament of 2008 that he’d love to do over again if given the chance. As fantastic as it might seem to most, Scroggins would understandably script it differently.