FishRook
An 8-year-old boy from Webster, N.Y., in Monroe County is now the proud owner of the new state freshwater fishing record for rock bass.
Jason Leusch was fishing off the dock at the family’s cottage at Port Bay on Lake Ontario in Wayne County on May 24 just before 10:30 a.m. when he yelled to his parents that he hooked “a big one.”
Mom and Dad were initially slow to react, since their son had already landed about 20 rock bass that morning. He was fishing with a 5-foot, ultra-light pole using fathead minnows as bait.
“I told him at the time, we’d be down there in a second,” said Mike Leusch, his father. “When I got down there and looked at the fish, I said, ‘Holy Cow, that’s a big one, buddy.’ ”
The father, whipped out his iPhone and looked up the state record for rock bass: Eric Avogardo of Hawthorne, N.J. in 1984, who caught a 1- pound, 15-ounce rockie in the Ramapo River.
“I then grabbed my digital scale and the fish was 2.00 pounds – right on the button,”…
