It doesn’t always take fancy equipment or years of experience to land a trophy bass. Just ask Bruce Ross, whose 5-year-old son Brandon recently landed a bass that tipped the scales at almost eight pounds.

Brandon, who has been going fishing with his father since he was two, caught the seven pound, seven ounce bass at a private pond near Kingston.

&uot;We were actually bream fishing with crickets,&uot; Bruce Ross said. &uot;I went back up to the truck, and I heard him say he had caught one. I told him to reel it in.&uot;

It wasn’t quite that easy.

Brandon was fishing with a small Zebco 33 with just eight-pound test line.

&uot;When I got back I saw the rod bent over, and I knew he didn’t have a bream on the end of the line,&uot; Bruce Ross said.

It took Brandon a few minutes to get the big bass up to the edge of the water, and then disaster almost struck.

&uot;He got him (the bass) right up to the edge, but the line broke,&uot; Bruce Ross said. &uot;I was able to reach down and grab it before it got away.&uot;

Landing the big bass did nothing but further feed the fever the younger Ross has for fishing.

&uot;That is all he has talked about since we got back,&uot; Ross said. &uot;If I tell him at night we are going fishing the next day, he will wake me up early the next morning ready to go.&uot;