A 64-year-old retiree, an avid recreational bass angler, just wanted to catch a few spotted bass for a small fish fry on a mid-August evening at Toledo Bend. Henry Boudreaux of Baton Rouge, a retired technician for Dow Chemical, planned to fish a little while, then return because a rainstorm was approaching. He left his camp along Negreet Creek in his 21-foot Phoenix powered by a 250hp Mercury and headed to the midlake area around Tennessee Bay, what he refers to as “that Twin Island area.”
“The first spot I pulled into, I think it was my second cast, I caught a small spotted bass on a crankbait,” Boudreaux said.
Unbeknownst to him, that was going to be the end of his afternoon spotted bass fishing trip. What happened next resulted in his new PB bass, a monstrous 11.21-pounder, 27 inches long with a 19 3/4-inch girth.
“I didn’t think nothing about it,” he said about the spotted bass catch. “I picked up a worm, cast and never felt it hit the bottom.”
Instead, the 15-pound test Seaguar InvizX Fluorocarbon Line went slack, actually arcing to the boat due to an unseen force. The 40-year veteran bass angler reacted accordingly.
“I started taking in slack in the line,” Boudreaux said. “I set the hook. I wasn’t expecting anything like that on the end of the line. It definitely caught me off guard. She was in charge of the situation.”
Grabbing the net
How unexpected was it? Boudreaux’s landing net was in its compartment under the seat. He really was in a bind. There was an unhappy brute of a bass on the business end of his fishing line and a perfectly good landing net to scoop it out of the water under a lid.
Boudreaux did the best he could.
“So I had one hand on the rod trying to hold on to the fish and the other hand trying to get the net,” he said.
Boudreaux groped and fiddled with his free hand as much as possible, freed the landing net, then used a foot to help pull out the telescopic handle. All the while the bass stayed on the right side of the boat.
Boudreaux had bumped the trolling motor soon after realizing how big the fish was to get away from the underwater brushtops he was targeting 30 feet deep. The bass inhaled a Zoom Trick Worm at approximately 15 feet deep.
“I was able to get her out to more open water,” he said. “She pulled down for a minute, then slowly came to the surface. Then I saw the actual size of the fish. Then she went back down. All this time I’m trying to get the net. Funny thing is when I netted her and put her in the bottom of the boat I realized how big she was.”
Getting her weighed
Boudreaux immediately sprang into action, focused on saving the life of the big bass. He eased the “hawg” into the livewell and dumped ice into the water. Then he took her straight to Buckeye Landing Marina.
“They did a really good job resuscitating that fish,” he said, noting bass that come up to feed experience problems after being pulled from the cool, deep water.
Buckeye Landing Marina staffers weighed the bass and also discovered it was caught, weighed and tagged in June 2023 at 10.80 pounds (weighed at Holly Park Marina) and again in October 2023 at 10.84 pounds (weighed at Keith’s Toledo Tackle).
“To me that’s what makes the story … this fish was tagged twice!” Boudreaux said.
Its most recent appearance in a weigh-in basket on a digital scale made it the ninth bass entered in the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program for 2025-26. It also eclipsed Boudreaux’s previous PB, an 8-pound class bass he caught 3 years ago at Toledo Bend, where he has had a camp for 12 years.
Before delivering his catch to the marina, Boudreaux snapped a photo of the big bass in the livewell and sent it to his wife, Deanna Boudreaux, who was back home in Baton Rouge. Her reply? “Oh my God.”
“She spelled it out,” he said with a chuckle.
