Wayne Holland of Blairsville hoists his new state-record spotted bass he took from Lake Burton. Photo courtesy of Wayne Holland

What can a bass fisherman appreciate more than a limit of five spotted bass topping 25 pounds in total weight? How about one of those bass tipping the scales at more than 8 pounds and landing in the state-record book? And it didn't hurt that the fisherman made those catches of a monster bass on a trout fishing trip!

Wayne Holland of Blairsville was out for a day of fishing for brown trout at Lake Burton with his regular Wednesday angling partner, Frank Wright of Blue Ridge, when the action occurred.

"Those five bass -- and a few others -- looked like brothers, actually more like twins, and that limit of spots would have been the heaviest tournament stringer of spots I ever weighed," said the veteran tournament bass angler. Among those fish that day was the new state-record spotted bass, an 8-pound, 2-ounce pig of a bass.

Oddly, that particular day was given over to trout fishing, Holland admitted. Any other day, he would have been looking for the schools of blueback herrings that he and many other northeast Georgia bass anglers say account for the trend of unusually large spotted bass caught over the last several years at Lake Burton.

"Frank and I have been fishing together a long time. That day, we planned to fish for the big brown trout that are growing fat on the herrings in Lake Burton, so we were working around the open water of the lake, looking for the trout," Holland said.

No stranger to fishing this area, Holland is a part-time guide for the Upper-Hi Fly Shop and Outfitters in Hiawasee.

When he's focused on bass fishing in late winter and early spring on Lake Burton, he usually locates the prolific herrings around structure. But the brown trout stocked by the Wildlife Resources Division (WRD) of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources are open-water fish that are released in Lake Burton to control the growing population of herring.

Those herring are suspected of impacting the annual recruitment of largemouth bass. Fisheries biologists from the WRD say the prolific and predacious herrings grow to about 15 inches long and occupy the same portions of the lake when and where largemouths spawn. The herring feed on both plankton and small fish, including largemouth bass. As a result, largemouth numbers are in decline at Burton, and in some years, no recruitment of largemouths takes place.

The blueback herring were introduced illegally to Lake Burton and many other reservoirs in Georgia.

Fisheries biologist Anthony Raburn at the Lake Burton Fish Hatchery, adjacent to Moccasin Creek State Park on the lake's west side, says survey data revealed that the herring first appeared in Burton in 1993. He suspects anglers introduced the fish in 1990.

"And I'd guess that Holland's state-record spot was born at about the time the bluebacks were introduced," Raburn speculated, accounting for the fish's enormous size, which is less than a pound and a half off the world-record mark for spotted bass.

A 9-pound, 9-ounce brute caught in 1996 at Pine Flat Reservoir in California holds the world record.

Holland's record-book spot was caught on a Sworming Hornet Fish Head Spin, a relatively new drop-type lure that sports a willow-leaf spinner on jig heads of different weights and colors. The 1/4-ounce model he chose that day was tipped with a soft-plastic fluke-style trailer. He won't say what color pattern he used that day, but there's no secret to how this drop bait is fished.

"We saw a pile of bluebacks suddenly dart around, so I picked up the lure and threw it into the bait. I just let it drop through the bait, and at about 7 or 8 feet down, the line went limp and I set the hook," Holland recalled.

Fortunately, the big spot was hooked in deep, open water.