‘I Wasn’t Going to Kill That Bass.’ Tournament Angler Releases Possible State-Record Smallmouth

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

“I knew it was a good bass, but I figured it was only about 6 pounds,” the 25-year-old tells Outdoor Life. “I couldn’t get the fish up easily. It didn’t jump, but it finally came up three or four times at the surface where I could see it was a giant. I had trouble getting 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 the massive the fish really was, but at the time, 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 runs Deep River Technologies, a marine electronics company. “I just wanted to make sure I caught over 30 pounds of bass that day to quality for the next tournament.”

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Piraino says he immediately “fizzed” the bass, which entails using a special tool to pierce the air bladder inside the fish. This helps fish decompress and improves their chances of survival after being hauled up quickly from deep water.

“I fizzed it and put it back in my boat’s live well and the fish righted itself,” he said. “I knew then it was OK. I checked it 10 minutes later and through the morning and the fish was just fine.”

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

“I never would have known there were bass on that flat without my LiveScope,” he said. “But days earlier I had spotted some big fish, and I checked it during the tournament and started catching them. They were solo, and I’d catch one every 20 or 30 minutes.”

Piraino was using a 4-inch Berkley Flat Nose Minnow soft plastic lure in green pumpkin color on a 3/8-ounce Ned Rig. His spinning outfit held 10-pound test braided line, connected to a 10-pound fluorocarbon leader.

He stayed on fish throughout the day. By the end of competition, Piraino had put together in an impressive bag with two 5-pounders and two 6-pounders in addition to the lunker he landed that morning. He wouldn’t know how big that fish was until he made the hour run 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 hooting and hollering and said it was a state record,” Piraino says. “I had no idea it was that big or could be a record until then.”

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

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

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

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

“Guess I got to look into have a replica mount made of that 9-pounder,” Piraino says, “because we sure don’t see one like that every day.”