Alexandria angler checks off bucket list item, Many fisherman strikes gold late at night
Pat Dion said a 10-pound bass has been on his bucket list almost forever.
“I have been fishing a lot on this lake, all the way back to when I was a kid,” said Dion, a 62-year-old retiree whose parents brought him to the lake almost five decades ago. “I never caught a 10-pounder; that has always been on my bucket list, and I finally got it off.”
Around 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 17, fishing a creek channel drop in Housen Bay with his wife, Cindy, Dion pitched a Texas-rigged Zoom trick worm in redbug color into 10 or 12 feet of water, near some grass and wooden cover.
“I hadn’t a bite, and my wife had only caught one fish. I was really fishing my way back in,” he said. “I told her I was gonna make one more pass through before we put up our rods. I cast one time and caught that fish.”
Quite the surprise
At Keith’s Toledo Bend Tackle a few minutes later, Dion’s fish weighed 12.33 pounds, was 26 inches long and 20½ inches in girth; it was the seventh fish to qualify for the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program since the 2025-26 season opened in May. It followed an 11.16-pound fish caught by William Lipps of Many early in the morning of Sunday, July 13.
“I pitched in there and let it go all the way to the bottom,” said Dion, who was using a 7-foot-3, medium-heavy Duckett rod and Shimano SLX reel spooled with 20-pound Trilene FC. “When I picked it up, the line was moving. She had picked it up on the fall, and I never felt her.”
After setting the hook, Dion got a quick look at the fish.
“When I first saw her, I said, ‘Oh, Lord, look at that.’ She came up again and ran up close to the bottom. She got close to the trolling motor, but she came around and my wife scooped her up the first time.”
The Dions immediately quit fishing once the lunker was in the livewell and headed to Keith’s to weigh it on certified scales and get it entered into the Lunker Program.
Night tournament success
William Lipps didn’t get his huge fish weighed in quite as quickly, because he and fishing partner Mike Midkiff of Shreveport were fishing in a night tournament that began at 7 p.m.
“We started at 7, in Six Mile, where we caught at 5 (-pounder),” he said. “Then we went to Indian Mound and caught some small fish – no keepers. Then we went to the Oil Well area. We were fishing down a bank – we’d fished around the far side of this place, probably three or four times – and I was fishing about 9 feet deep.”
Fishing a Zoom Mag UV craw worm Texas-rigged with a ⅛-ounce tungsten weight on a 7-foot-3 Carrot Stick matched with a Daiwa Tatula reel spooled with 20-pound Yo-Zuri Hybrid, he felt a fish pick up his bait.
“She was on a piece of wood, and as soon as I came across it, she bit it,” Lipps said. “I set the hook on her, and I told Mike to get the net. She came up and rolled and pulled some drag. I figured she was an 8- or 9-pounder. When he got her in the net and pulled her up out of the water, I told him it was a 10-pounder. She was hooked perfectly, right in the side of the mouth. I was worried because they swallow that little bait so easy, but this was perfect.”
Lipps and Midkiff kept on fishing, catching a 4-pound, 3-ounce fish and a 3 ½-pounder later, finishing with around 23 pounds and winning the tournament’s big-fish pot.
Tagged fish
After weighing in at the tournament site, the pair put the fish back in the livewell and headed to Buckeye Landing to get it officially weighed at 11.16 pounds, 27 inches long and 19½ inches in girth.
At Buckeye, Lipps learned that the fish was tagged and had been caught this past May 18 by angler Kaden Elkins of Robeline. Almost two months before Lipps caught it, the fish weighed 10.57 pounds when Elkins boated it.
“She was putting weight back on already, after two months,” Lipps said.
