There’s a good-sized bass swimming in a Lake Fausse Pointe canal that really brightened an aging bass angler’s afternoon on Oct. 5.

And, by default, that bass can claim to be the outdoorsman’s personal best bass at 6.85 pounds. It is swimming with the fishes again and may provide a memorable moment for a lucky bass angler in the future, hopefully to be released again.

The big bass slammed/smashed/smoked a homemade chartreuse/white buzz bait about 3:15 p.m. that Wednesday about 8 feet from the bow of the aluminum Ranger bass boat on a sunny, unseasonably warm day in early October. It was only the bass angler’s second bite of the day since starting his trip around noon, ostensibly to run the 150-h.p. Mercury ProXS on the back of the RT198P.

The veteran bass angler, fishing alone, was ready for the bite, nevertheless, and hooked it solidly in the roof of its big mouth. That hookset triggered the fish’s underwater dive to the back of the boat, perilously near the outboard motor’s lower unit, then back toward the front as it muscled its way to deeper water.

At first, the bass angler reckoned a choupique was on the business end of his line. After all, tell-tale bubbles surfaced with the fish’s first run and we all know what that usually means.

As he hurried to the back of the boat to pull the fish away from the outboard motor, he wondered again. Before getting a good look, he thought if it was a bass it was a big ol’ bass, judging by the length of the body.

The 15-pound Trilene Big Game linking fisherman to fish rubbed the length of the starboard rub rail as the bass angler walked with the submarining fish back up to the bow, then strained to keep it out of the trolling motor.

Following a few figure eights with the fishing rod in the skirmish, the bass angler settled in the seat behind the boat’s console, held the fishing rod high in his left hand and dragged the bass to the boat, where he reached far to lip the bass.

Adrenaline seemed to kick in late, after he had his hands on a big, beautiful bass.

After weighing the bass and photographing the digital scale, he took a few more photos of the bass he gripped tightly in the familiar fisherman-with-prize-catch pose. The New Iberian took care to place it in a full livewell between photo ops.

He took it out of the livewell one more time, leaned over the side of the boat and released the bass in Big Dogleg. It swam away and out of sight.

Then the bass angler, who has been writing about other fishermen’s accomplishments, great catches and PBs and enjoying every minute of it since 1976, made sure to silently give credit to the Superbait buzzbait’s maker, his younger brother, Bill Shoopman of Archie, Missouri. The brother’s buzz baits accounted for the other two similarly sized bass, one in the lake and the other at Toledo Bend.

The nearly 70-year-old bass angler took a few more moments to collect his thoughts and reflect on the fact the Lew’s fishing rod and reel combo that helped him win that battle with the 6.85-pounder was given to him by his youngest son, Jacob Shoopman of New Iberia, and the Favorite fishing rod loaded with a Senko for a comeback bait (in case any bass swings and misses at a buzz bait) also was a gift from Jacob.

His son was with him several years ago when he caught and released an apparent 7-pound class bass on a Superbait buzz bait in a Lake Fausse Pointe borrow pit along the West Atchafalaya Basin Protection Levee. But the bass angler never counted it as a PB because there was no digital scale in the boat, so it wasn’t weighed.

Jacob and their close friend, Zach Suit of Denton, Texas, formerly of New Iberia, were with him when he caught and released another apparent 7-pound class bass on a buzz bait a few years later at Toledo Bend. It, too, never was considered a PB because it wasn’t weighed.

I sure was proud of this one, now in its official place as my PB.

Life is good. Fishing is great.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.