According to Fish and Game, the added weight from their eggs comes in February, March and April. Their eggs can add 2 to 3 pounds to each female in the spring. They shed those pounds when they spawn, which is why the window to catch world-record-size bass comes in late winter and early spring.

“It’s such a rarity, you don’t expect the world-record fish to be caught,” added Giusti, who said a trophy female bass living in Southern California can gain and lose as much as 2 pounds a year and can live close to 20 years. “Basically, it’s a one-of-a-kind fish. You need a fish that’s eaten a large meal, so you get the added weight if you want to break the world record.”

There’s a few necessary ingredients — crawdads, shad, panfish, stocked trout — to grow world-record-size bass. Most Southern Cal reservoirs have them all. These food sources serve as growing pills for largemouth. The forage allows them to grow faster than they would in other areas of the country where less food is available and the growing season is shortened by wintry conditions. Bass metabolism slows when the water is cold. Relatively speaking, water doesn’t get cold here.

From San Diego to Ventura and throughout Los Angeles and Riverside County, the greater Los Angeles Basin has been hailed as a Mecca for world-class bass since the early 1980s.

According to the Bassmaster Top 25 — a list of the top 25 largemouth bass catches — 21 of the 25 heaviest came from Southern California.

Even if the world record doesn’t come this year, the chance of more huge bass is strong. Locals, professional anglers, Fish and Game and guides believe more fish will be added to that list this year.

On the other hand, Giusti cautions anglers not to get overly excited, especially when it comes to catching that 25.1-pounder again. Even though it wasn’t found floating, that fish has probably died.

“That fish was probably 20 years old,” says Giusti of Weakley’s catch. “It’s probably pushing its lifespan. As far as I know it’s still alive. They said it took off when they released it. It could live another year, but will it be caught again? Who knows? If it dies, we might not even know. If it’s down at the bottom and died, the pressure could collapse the air bladder and (it would) stay on the bottom, or it could get trapped in the tules and guys would never see it.”

Dixon and nearby Poway Lake are two San Diego-area lakes that have the ability to kick out a world-record fish. These are both small park lakes that are heavily stocked with trout. Largemouths slurp these trout down, which enables the bass to grow rapidly. Each of these waters harbors a small number of large bass, maybe only one or two. Fish and Game believes these fish could be close to the end of their lives, meaning that if those fish die, it could take another 10 years or more for younger bass to grow to those proportions again.

“You have to get it in the right condition and the right time,” said Giusti. “There has also been some die-off issues in Dixon and Poway. There aren’t a lot of big fish there. The total number of fish there isn’t that great.”