Comeaux lands hawg in Mill Creek on a wacky-rigged, watermelon-purple Zoom Trick worm
A father-son outing on Toledo Bend turned into the trip of a lifetime Saturday when Keith Comeaux landed his biggest lunker ever — an enormous 12.90-pounder that devoured a wacky-rigged plastic worm in Mill Creek.
Launching at daylight from Toledo Bend Resort, the elder Comeaux, from Lake Charles, made note the temperature was 32 degrees, but fortunately waters were calm due to a lack of wind.
“We began fishing in Housen in the morning,” the 49-year-old said. “All we were able to do was pick up a couple of keepers. It was tough.”
In the afternoon, though, he decided to make a run south to Mill Creek for the rest of the day.
The anglers were fishing shallow, casting in 4 feet of water toward the shoreline between hay grass and patches of hydrilla.
Comeaux was throwing a wacky-rigged, watermelon-purple Zoom Trick Worm tied to 12-pound line spooled to a Lew’s reel on a Shimano rod.
“At 3 p.m., I broke off on a fish estimated to be 4 to 5 pounds,” he said. “I retied, and two casts later a fish hit the lure on the fall.”
When he set the hook, he knew immediately it was a heavy fish.
“It didn’t want to come up at all,” he said.
Comeaux recalled the fish running toward the front of the boat two times while pulling drag.
“I told Brandon to get the net out,” he said.
But the fish bolted under the boat immediately upon seeing the net.
“I kept sticking the end of the rod as far out as I could to keep the line from touching the net and breaking,” Comeaux said.
Once the fish was netted and brought aboard, Comeaux knew it was the bass of a lifetime.
“I had taken a couple of 8s in the past, but nothing this big,” he said.
Comeaux reached for his brand new handheld scale, but when he unwrapped the device he got every parent’s worst Christmas morning nightmare: no batteries were included.
So he motored over to a nearby angler and asked to borrow a scale.
“When I reached in the livewell and pulled the bass out, the fellow said, ‘It’s way bigger than 10,’” he said.
On that angler’s scale, the bass weighed a chunnky 13.1 pounds.
So Comeaux immediately made the run to Buckeye Landing to obtain a certified weight for potential entry into the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program.
At Buckeye, the big bass officially tipped the scales at 12.90 pounds, with a length of 26 ½ inches and a 21 ½-inch girth.
It was released after tagging, and Comeaux will receive a free replica courtesy of the Toledo Bend Lake Association in May.
Comeaux’s monster is lunker No. 66 for the 2015-16 season.
