From a baby bass in a freshly stocked pond to a bluegill-devouring adult, TikTok has watched Gus the bass grow and develop through the eyes of 19-year-old influencer Michael Wiebelhaus.
Wiebelhaus, a freshman at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln majoring in marketing, caught the now-famous bass last year in a friend's backyard pond and deposited him in a 50-gallon tank.
"My dad had a pet bass in the past, and I thought it was a really cool idea," he said.
After Wiebelhaus brought the fish home and transferred it to the tank, he started documenting the fish's life.
"I was recording everything because I like having videos to look back on,"Â Wiebelhaus said. "I just decided to post them on TikTok one day for fun, not expecting it to blow up and, a couple videos later, one went off real big. After that, slowly, followers started growing."
The first video featuring the bass asked followers to come up with a name, giving naming rights to the comment with the most likes. Following a rigorous voting process, the bass had a name: Gus.
That video premiered on Wiebelhaus' first account, but he wanted to vary content and not clog it up with bass videos, so he created a separate Gus-centric profile that quickly went viral.
"My fishing account is strictly outdoors people, where for Gus it's literally everybody," Wiebelhaus said. "There's so many different people following along and seeing how he's doing. ... It's pretty cool to get comments from, like, Switzerland saying 'Hope Gus is doing OK!'"
Wiebelhaus started his fishing account in 2020, and it now has more than 1.5 million followers. The Gus the bass account has just more than 800,000 followers.
"I think my experience with my other account definitely helped out my knowledge of fishing and how to run a TikTok account,"Â Wiebelhaus said. "So once I started getting followers, I was able to capitalize on that one video and just keep growing from there."
However, not every response to his content has been positive.
"I had him in that 50-gallon tank and got a ton of comments saying he needs a bigger tank, which I agree, but even after I got him in a 150-gallon tank I was getting even more comments," he said.
Content on the Gus account centers around feeding him different types of food and testing products.
"I'd show him lures in front of the glass and he'd chase them around,"Â Wiebelhaus said. "I've fed him everything, like hot dogs, crickets, worms, goldfish, minnows and creek chub. Now that he's gotten a lot bigger, he likes stuff that's more alive and moving."
Wiebelhaus even tried to give Gus a small bluegill as a tankmate, but the smaller fish disappeared.
He said the TikTok account has been bringing in some money, but the experience of watching Gus grow, and interacting with followers has been the best part.
Gus is at Wiebelhaus' home in Springfield, but he's making plans to move the bass into his dorm soon.
In the future, Wiebelhaus wants to be a social media marketer, or at least stay in the social media industry. And with bass having a 20-year life expectancy, followers can plan to see a lot more of Gus.
"I can't believe a fish, a literal fish, is famous,"Â Wiebelhaus said.
Michael Wiebelhaus, a freshman at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, created a TikTok page to document the growth of his pet bass. The page has garnered more than 800,000 followers.