Most fish that survive a bad decision do not repeat it. The smallmouth bass holding on a bed in seven feet of water in Lake Sammamish made the same one three times in eleven days, and the third time put a Washington guide into the IGFA record book.
Chris Senyohl, 58, runs Intrepid Anglers Guide Service and first found the fish on May 12 while out with friend Tom Wolf on the 4,900-acre lake at Bellevue.
"I first saw the fish and caught it on May 12 while fishing with Tom Wolf," Senyohl told Outdoor Life. "It was near a bass bed in 7 feet of water and I cast to it with a rabbit strip sculpin minnow fly that I tied."
The fish ran better than seven pounds — unusual for a state not associated with heavyweight smallmouth. Senyohl released it, then went looking at the record books.
"After I released it I checked the IGFA records and the measurements and was shocked that the bass could have been big enough for an IGFA catch-and-release record," he said. "I knew her true overall length from that first encounter with my measure net."
That started a fortnight of housekeeping. A week later he returned with his wife, Laney, found the bass on the same bed, and caught it again on another rabbit-fur sculpin — this time with an official IGFA measuring board. The photographs came out badly. So on May 23 he went back a third time, with Laney and Wolf, carrying the board plus a small clear container he built himself and calls a photo box, modelled on the tanks biologists use to inspect fish without injuring them.
"She touched glass on both ends of my photo box which is 22.5-inches inside diameter," he said. "We had to get her onto the IGFA board and measure the length from the fork of the tail to its nose. We had to close its mouth for that measurement, and she didn't like that."
The International Game Fish Association has since listed the fish in its July 2026 approvals at 53 centimetres — 20.86 inches — tying its All-Tackle Length Fly world record for smallmouth bass. Outdoor Life reports the catch also ties in the association's broader all-time length category. Both marks are shared with several other fish of identical length, which is the nature of length-based records: they produce ties rather than the decisive ounces that settle weight records.
That is the quiet story underneath this one. Senyohl's fish sits in an IGFA July class dominated by measured-and-released catches — Bob Gaines' 83-centimetre cutthroat trout from Pyramid Lake, Nevada, taken on a beetle fly in March; Sam Aslop's 92-centimetre crevalle jack off Hobe Sound, Florida; Derek Loe's 61-centimetre kelp bass off Santa Monica, boated on a swimbait while fishing with guide Oliver Ngy. Every one of those fish swam away. Only Will Hefley's 72-pound, 9-ounce Pacific black snook from Quepos, Costa Rica went to a certified scale.
Montana Outdoor, covering the catch, made the obvious joke about a fish fooled three times on the same fly by the same man, and noted that Senyohl has effectively promised to come back for her. But its writer also landed on the detail that matters: the record-setter was released unharmed, and has been seen since.
Senyohl went back to the spot in late June without a rod in his hand.
"She was still there, though I didn't try to catch her," he said. "I know it was the same bass because she has a roughed-up pectoral fin that's easy to identify and her color pattern is recognizable, too."
There is a fair argument that catching a bedding fish three times in under a fortnight says as much about the bass as the angler. There is also a version of the record chase that ends with a big smallmouth on ice for a certified weight. This one ended with the fish back on her bed, a fin scar as the identifying mark, and an open invitation for next spring.
