When Greer Billeaud says he “figured out something” about putting good-sized bass in the boat at Toledo Bend, believe him.
The proof is in the pudding, er, in the monstrous size of a bass he hooked, then lipped less than a minute later on a late evening trip April 6 on a spur-of-the-moment outing with his young son, Hansen. The 7-year-old boy screamed with delight when he saw it the first time it rolled near the boat before the 33-year-old outdoorsman got a serious case of the yips once he lifted the “hawg.”
“They talk about ‘buck fever.’ I guess there’s such a thing as big bass fever, also,” Billeaud said a few days after he weighed the 12.50-pound bass at Buckeye Landing Marina on the Louisiana side south of Pendleton Bridge.
The big bass was entered in the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program for the 2025-2026 season, as well as a place in his heart as his PB. The bass measured 29 inches long and 21 ½ inches around its big ol’ belly.
Sunset bass
Billeaud, a lifelong Lafayette resident who has a camp on Slaughter Creek, certainly had them figured out by the time the father and son took yet another trip out on the lake after he had fried crappie for supper. About 7:15 p.m., as the sun was sinking, he said, “Let’s see if we can go catch a big one real quick.”
Billeaud was ’scopin’, as he did when he and his boy went on April 4 and he boated a “Dirty 30,” and again the next day when his biggest five bass weighed 25 pounds. At his first stop that fateful night, he nailed a few “spots” (spotted bass) in about 5 foot of water.
Then Billeaud noticed an image on his forward facing sonar about 15 feet in front of the boat. He cast a Hideup Coike at the shape, and suddenly he didn’t see the soft plastic “dice” bait that has become the rage across the country. It was almost 7:30 p.m.
“I set the hook,” he said. “I jacked her. When I set the hook, the fish was so big I thought I had a big catfish at first. It kind of ran straight at us. Then it came up by the driver’s side. Then it rolled. My little boy started screaming, ‘That’s a bass! That’s a bass!’ It looked like 40 pounds it was so big.”
The death grip
The Billeaud’s Boudin (also known as Billeaud’s III in Broussard) owner settled into the seat behind the steering wheel, well-versed in getting bass of considerable size into the boat by gripping their lip.
“I really didn’t give it much of a chance. I kind of horsed it in. She came up one more time. I got my hand on her and put her in the boat. I put the death grip on it. It wasn’t coming off. I called my dad and said I had a big one,” he said, referring to Billy Billeaud, owner of Billeaud’s Grocery in Broussard, “and ran back to the camp. I weighed it on two scales. My dinky scale said 13. My friend there, his scale said 12.87.”
Billeaud drove with the bass to Buckeye Marina Landing, where he knows owner Marcus Henry, “a super nice guy,” he said.
He was using a 7-6 MH “(Skeet) Reese Fishing Rod” with a Daiwa Tatula reel loaded with 17-pound test Seaguar InvisX fluorocarbon line.
“I definitely feel blessed,” he said. “I think I’ll be chasing that one for a long time. It’ll be hard for me to beat that one. But I’m going to try.”
