It’s technically still winter, but bass fishermen at Toledo Bend Reservoir along the Texas-Louisiana border have been finding that spring must not be too far away, catching trophy bass in relatively shallow water.
Two Louisiana fishermen boated their personal-best fish. Lynn Ortego of Ville Platte boated a 10.92-pound largemouth and John Cameron of Bossier City boated an 11.13-pound brute.
Ortego’s big, green surprise
You’ve heard of the stars aligning, like most of the planets lined up, strung out across the sky beside the moon? Truly, a special thing.
That’s how Lynn Ortego of Ville Platte felt this past Tuesday, March 3, when all the fishing stars lined up, giving him the chance to boat the biggest bass of his lifetime, a 10.92-pound Toledo Bend brute.
“I have been trying to catch one for 40-something years,” Ortego said. “I’ve had a camp here for 12 years. Those 10-pounders are hard to catch. But everything was just set up right. The weather was good, the water temperature was going up. It was a pretty day, then the clouds came rolling in with the front. I’m sure the barometric pressure was dropping.”
In a shallow area around mid-lake, Ortego found that the fourth time, not the third, was the charm. Fishing that afternoon, he caught three bass, all around 3 pounds, in the one general place.
“I started catching good fish in that shallow water; the fish were moving up that afternoon. The water temperature started at 57 and was up to 62,” he said.
Fighting the fish
Around 3:30, Ortego was using a Falcon rod and STX reel spooled with 15-pound fluorocarbon, making long, underhanded pitches to shallow water under overhanging willow limbs when he felt the unmistakable tap of a bass inhaling his Texas-rigged Zoom Baby Brush Hog.
“I was fishing inside the grass line, close to the bank on an old island, a place with some old willows that the beavers tear up every year; they get thicker and thicker,” he said. “And there’s a deep-water creek 30 yards away. It’s a fish magnet.
“I was pitching under the willow limbs, and she just hit it. They were hitting it pretty good but not taking off, busting the water. I think they are still a little lethargic, but I could feel the bite, no problem.
“I didn’t have time to think about losing her, but you say a little prayer anyway while you’re doing it. But I got her away from the cover pretty quick, and I had enough water depth to fight her. She pulled – she bent my rod over the side of the boat into the water.”
Fishing by himself, Ortego tired the fish out, reached over the side, lipped her and lifted her into his boat. At that point, he realized what he was dealing with; he has caught fish heavier than 9 pounds, but this one was clearly bigger.
“I was so surprised to see a fish that big that shallow,” he said. “This is a place I’ve caught fish every year in the spring.”
New batteries save the day
Ortego figured he had a double-digit fish on his hands, so he ran to Keith’s Toledo Bend Tackle to get the fish weighed on certified scales and hopefully, qualify for the Toledo Bend Lunker Program and get a free replica mount of the beast.
Somebody met him in the parking lot and weighed the fish on hand-held, digital scales, which registered 8.92 pounds. Ortego knew something was wrong; the person ran back inside to get new batteries, and with the scales fixed, the big fish weighed well over 10 pounds. On the certified scales, she registered 10.92 pounds, 24 ½ inches long and 18 ½ inches in girth.
“The fish was full of eggs; she left some in my livewell when we got her out,” he said. “But there’s no way she was already on the bed. I had checked some places on the south end, and at mid-lake, places they bed, and they weren’t spawning.
When one is enough
By a lot of anglers’ standards, John Cameron of Bossier City didn’t have that great a day on Feb. 28, bass fishing at Toledo Bend.
He only caught one fish.
Of course, that fish weighed 11.13 pounds, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad day after all.
Fishing toward a spawning pocket near North Toledo Bend State Park, Cameron, a 69-year-old retired mechanic, looked around in shallow water for a bit and found a little 3-foot drop close to the bank that featured “some nice-looking roots.”
Fishing a Texas rig, Cameron tied on a black tube with blue tentacles and made a short pitch toward the roots.
“I backlashed it a little,” he said, chuckling. “I got it fixed, then I started working (the tube) out. I like it to fall straight down and hit the bottom, then I pop it up and work it so that it really zig-zags from side to side, then I let it fall back down.
“It wasn’t a long cast, and after I worked it a little, I noticed the line moving.”
A life-long goal
After setting the hook, he battled the fish for a minute or two, getting her close to the boat once but missing the chance to lip her and swing her into his boat. The next time he got the fish close, he grabbed her and brought her aboard.
Cameron caught the fish around 2 p.m. on a 7-foot Excursion rod mated with a Lew’s reel spooled with 20-pound Cajun mono.
“She wasn’t too far from the bank, maybe in 2 feet of water,” he said. “That was the only fish I caught all day. We didn’t start until almost 2 in the afternoon; we were camping, and we slept in. But I knew a spot not very far from where we were camping and went there. I was getting ready to go back in this one little pocket when I caught her.
“This was a very cherished moment. One of my life-long goals was to catch a double-digit bass. I didn’t think it was ever going to happen.”
Cameron took the fish to Keith’s Toledo Bend Tackle, where the fish was officially weighed at 11.13 pounds, measuring 25 inches long. The fish was tagged and released alive, earning Cameron a free replica mount from the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program.
