Big Fish Fridays: Teimeyer

Late winter and early spring are big bass times in Illinois.

Nowhere was that more evident last Saturday than on Lake Springfield, the cooling lake in the state capitol.

Two competitors in the Five Alive Bass Anglers’ tournament that day headed to the weigh-in thinking they had a good shot at big bass. Amazingly enough, Kerry Trueblood (pictured above at right) came up short even with a 6.3-pound bass.

That’s true because John Teimeyer (pictured above at left) caught an absolute hog, an 8-pound, 8-ounce largemouth that is thought to be the largest landed in Lake Springfield in recent memory. “I was just talking to Dan Stephenson and he said in 27 years of shocking fish out of there he’s never seen one over 8 pounds,” Teimeyer said.

Teimeyer was fishing on the bank across from the hot-water discharge and said water temperatures were running at 59 degrees when he hooked the big bass at about 11 a.m.

“I was fishing slow with a jig and caught that fish off of a laydown,” he said. “I set the hook and I got her to the surface pretty quick and then she darted right pretty quickly. So I started bringing her back and my buddy netted her pretty quick. It wasn’t a long, drawn-out thing, but it was still pretty exciting.”

Teimeyer caught his big bass on a 3/8th-ounce olive drab colored Angler Assets jig (pictured at right). The jig has strands of blue and is custom-made by Rob Danielson of Springfield. Teimeyer also had a crayfish-colored Rage trailer on the jig. “The color had a lot to do with it,” he said, “because we had 20 guys out fishing and everyone was throwing jigs and only a few brought in big bags.”

Teimeyer had fished a watermelon-seed Strike King tube jig earlier in the day but said that bait caught mostly smaller fish. “So I went with a bigger profile jig and that seemed to make a big difference,” he said.

Teimeyer wound up with five fish weighing 17 pounds, 14 ounces to tie for first place. And big bass for the tournament (right) also proved to be big bass for Teimeyer’s fishing career.

“I’ve got a 7-5 on the wall, that’s the biggest I had prior to this one,” he said. “It was hard to let (the 8-8 Lake Springfield fish go), but after a long decision I decided to have a replica made.”

Teimeyer had caught his 7-5 last March out of Lake Petersburg on a 7-inch Producto worm.