Caney Lake yields monster bass during tournament

Nomey’s glad he talked himself into going fishing one more time

Dusty Nomey fished in a bass tournament Saturday, Feb. 26, at Lake Claiborne in just awful conditions — rain, freezing cold, wind. And an awful bite. He decided that afternoon he was not fishing the Media Individual tournament Sunday down the road on Caney like he had planned.

But then he thawed out and at dinner, he talked himself into it. It wasn’t long into the day Sunday when he realized he made the right decision.

“Man, it was a great day,” he said.

Yes, it was. On his third cast, he hooked into a 13.21-pound monster that was the biggest of his life and it propelled him to win the tournament. He caught the fish on a Strike King chatterbait that he had swapped a skirt out for one from another lure to basically give it a little different look.

“Those fish like this one, they’ve seen no telling how many baits over and over and she’s probably been caught before, so I wanted something a little different,” he said.

He caught the fish in a spot that was a “memory hole,” one he has fished many times.

“I got whipped in this spot one time last year,” he said. “I spent a whole tournament sitting there watching those fish on the bottom in a little drain, but they never came up on the ledge and they never bit. But when I pulled up Sunday, oh my gosh, they were up on the ledge. I knew that meant they were feeding.”

The fight is on

On his third cast, he found out he was right. The big fish grabbed his bait and pulled like a ton of bricks, he said.

“She never came up and then she rolled and I just knew I had hooked a big blue cat,” Nomey said. “I even quit being serious about getting her in for a minute or two and just kept tugging on her. Then when she did come up and roll on the surface, I went nuts. I thought it might be the state record she looked so big.”

Nomey had a set of scales, but they had been weighing a bit light. When he put her on the scale, it read 13.6, so he immediately felt like he might have a 14 pounder. He wanted to stop and celebrate, but then he remembered something that most experienced Caney anglers know.

“These fish can be pretty cantankerous,” he said. “If you get a big fish to bite and you get the school fired up, you better stay on top of them because when they settle back down, you just about can’t do anything to get another one to bite. So I had to get right back in there.”

He did. And on his next cast he landed a 6-pounder. Then a couple more casts and he hooked another bass that pulled just like the 13 pounder.

More to come

“Oh my gosh,” he said. “I just knew I had another monster. And I did. The bass was well over 10 pounds and after fighting it a few minutes it tried to run around my outboard motor. I tried to pull it away from the motor and the hook just came out of it’s mouth. When I got back up front and settled down, I saw on my electronics that those fish were all swimming back down off the shelf and to the bottom. I knew it was over. It was almost like that big one that got off swam back down there and told the rest of them that it was a trap.”

He moved around and caught a few more smaller bass, enough to put together a five-fish limit weighing 28.88 to win the event. But he couldn’t hardly stand the wait to get to the weigh-in with his catch of a lifetime in the livewell.

It was a special thrill for Nomey to be able to have his wife, Brea, and son, Cruz, at the weigh-in. He said he wished his grandfather, Larry Pardue, could have been there because he taught Nomey not only how to fish, but how to love the sport. He hopes to pass that down to his son. Seeing catches like this one will certainly help the cause.