Lawler knew he had something nice on the line, but he figured it was a largemouth bass. "I didn't know what I had until I got the fish in the net," he says. "I realized, 'That's a redear and that's a big fish.' I thought something was wrong with it. It was completely bloated; the eyeballs were bugged out. The fish was just completely full of eggs. A huge female. If I had caught it after the spawn, this wouldn't have been as big a deal."