“The thing that amazes me most about that fish is not that it was caught in December, or on New Year’s Eve, or that it was as big as it was,” former fisheries director Jack Herring said at the time. “What amazed me about it was that she was not carrying a lot of egg roe. She was empty. Imagine if that fish had been caught three months later, just prior to the spawn, when her belly was full of eggs. She could easily have topped 20 pounds.

“Even more amazing,” Herring said, “was where and how it was caught.”

According to a story reported in The Clarion-Ledger newspaper on New Year’s Day, the previous day was extremely warm with temperatures in the 70s. Denny caught the fish in about 2 feet of water in one of the shallowest coves in the lake, right next to the boat ramp and a long, long way from the deeper parts of the lake.

“I saw a swirl in about a foot or two of water, and fortunately I had just retrieved my lure when I saw it,” Denny said. “I was able to throw at the swirl right after it happened.”

Denny was using a Rattlin’ Rogue jerkbait, and his cast landed just beyond the commotion. He twitched the bait a couple of times, and another swirl erupted in almost the same spot as the first.

The huge fish, one of the top 10 bass ever reported in the country at that time and the No. 4 largest state-record largemouth in the country at the time (Georgia, California and Florida), was hooked and headed to the record books. It replaced a fish that had been caught just a year before in the same lake.

According to Olen Walley, the Natchez State Park manager in 1992, it was just a matter of time back then before someone caught a monster that would stand the test of time.

“We had seen some fish in the 15- and 16-pound range in the lake,” he said. “We found one floating dead that weighed 16 pounds without the 2-pound catfish that had killed it. That bass had tried to eat a 2-pound catfish, and the catfish’s spines had lodged in its gullet. Biologists said that it couldn’t breathe and that’s what killed it.

“Biologists had actually shocked up a couple of other 16-pound fish earlier that year, including the one that Anthony caught.”

Obviously, after almost 20 years, none of the original Florida-strain fish still exist in Natchez State Park, and it’s doubtful that their genetic strain is still prevalent.

“But,” Skains pointed out, “there is some good fishing there, and I guess there’s a chance that the lake could produce something like that again. It’s doubtful, but not impossible.

“I do think that our next record will likely come from a very similar lake. You have to have certain things for a fish to grow that big, and that is a good original genetic strain of fish, lots of cover and even deep water, and a productive, fertile soil base. We had all of that at Natchez.”