Battenfield borrows spinnerbait from wife’s rod to lead Bend bass list
Derek Battenfield doesn’t throw a spinnerbait anymore. He’s gone completely to a Z-Man Jack Hammer when he’s looking for flash and vibration.
“I rarely ever throw a spinnerbait anymore – for whatever reason,” he admitted.
Except for Sunday, March 10. Fishing by himself, he pulled up on a mid-lake point at Toledo Bend with a shallow grass line and decided maybe a spinnerbait might be the right bait to roll down the edge.
But he didn’t have one tied on, so he opened his rod box and found a rod belonging to his wife, Diane, with a chatreuse/white Booyah tied on. A handful of casts later, he was lifting a 12.92-pound bass into his boat.
Battenfield was the seventh angler that weekend to boat a bass that weighed in double digits and qualified for the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program. Two of the seven, including Battenfield’s fish, had previously been certified, tagged and released as part of the TBLP.
Lunker list
On Saturday, March 9, Johnie Fountain of Hemphill, Texas, landed a 10.21-pound fish; Kim LaBry of Kaplan, La., caught a 10.17-pound fish, Colby Basco of Cheneyville, La., caught an 11.84-pound lunker (that had been caught and tagged on Feb. 11 at 11.81 pounds); Lee Glass of DeRidder, La., boated a 10.90-pound fish; Elvis Paul of Lafayette, La., landed an 11.29-pound fish, and Ronnie Madole of Shreveport caught a lunker that weighed 10 pounds even. Battenfield’s fish was the 37th of the 2023-24 season to qualify for the lunker program. The 38th was Trent Pharis of Dequincy, who hooked a 10.37-pound bass on March 13.
Battenfield, from Nederland, Texas, said his lunker bass came from 1½ to 2 feet of water, on a day he admitted was “pretty tough.” He pulled up to his spot shortly after 3 p.m., found his wife’s spinnerbait rod – a Lew’s rod and reel spooled with 30-pound Sufix braid, with a white V&M J Bug trailer – and made between 5 and 10 casts. On the 10th cast, he almost had the bait back to the boat when the huge bass crashed it.
“I was actually on the phone with my cousin, Barry Brice, when the fish hit – I had him on speaker phone on the front seat,” Battenfield said. “He heard me hollering and screaming and everything. He heard me yell, ‘I’ve got a 10.’
“The fish literally hit 3 feet from the boat; I saw her swirl and hit it, and I knew it was huge. She really never got more than 3 or 4 feet from the boat. She went under the boat, and she’d come out and jump, and I didn’t have a net, so I was down trying to grab her. I got her on the second try.”
Tagged fish
Battenfield had a Bubba scale in the boat, and the bass went on it, registering 12.15 pounds.
“My cousin said, ‘I’ll meet you,’ and he ran and met me at Buckeye (Landing),” Battenfield said.
At Buckeye, the bass weighed 12.92 pounds on certified scales – the biggest fish of Battenfield’s life – and measured 28 inches long and 20 ½ inches in girth. And a previous tag was discovered.
“I didn’t see it,” Battenfield said. “As soon as I caught her, I weighed her, put her in the livewell and took off. When we got there, one of the weigh-in guys said he had (a tag).”
Battenfield’s bass had been caught on April 11, 2023, weighing 13.60, before being tagged and released.
The difference in weight? Battenfield can’t say for sure that the big girl had already spawned, but he described a bloody tail and a belly that he said, “wasn’t huge.”
A bonus
Battenfield was entered in the Big Bass Splash, so his fish carried a $1,500 bonus. Whether he’ll get to keep it all, who knows? His wife, he said, “told me half the Bass Splash money was hers” – maybe a rental fee for the rod and spinnerbait.
