Lake Charles man boats Toledo Bend double-digit bass

Craig Bean was on a fishing trip at Toledo Bend with his buddy, Kenny Bailey, on Jan. 15 when he landed this 11.66-pound largemouth bass.

Craig Bean and his fishing buddy, Kenny Bailey – both from Lake Charles – had a fishing trip at Toledo Bend turn from “nothing great” to outstanding and then finished in a matter of minutes on Wednesday, Jan. 15, around 1 p.m.

That’s the time it took Bean to hook and land a huge largemouth bass, 11.66 pounds, 27 ¼ inches, the lake’s first double-digit bass of 2025.

Fishing in a creek off Housen Bay, Bean saw a big fish on his forward-facing sonar, suspended in standing timber about 15 feet deep in 25 feet of water. He pitched a Crush City Freeloader minnow on a 2/0, ¼-ounce tungsten Queen jighead, it settled down right on top of the fish, which sucked it down.

“We were fishing a drain, looking for some fish on the LiveScope,” Bean said. “It had been a slow bite. We got on the water about 9:30, and we had six fish, nothing great, the best about 3 ½ pounds.”

A good position

Bean was fishing a medium-fast Sixth Sense spinning rod paired with a Daiwa Tatula reel loaded with 16-pound braid, with a short, 12-pound fluorocarbon leader.

“She was about halfway back in a drain, and when I saw her on the LiveScope, I just happened to be in a good position,” Bean said. “She was pretty much out in front of me. She was a little too far when I first saw her, maybe 70 feet, but I worked into about 50 to 55 feet and pitched it.

“She didn’t move or flash on it, and my bait was right on her, just hitting her on the head. I lost it (on the screen) behind her, then the line got heavy and I knew she was on it. It was real quick, maybe 2 minutes. She only ran when I leaned into her.

“There was some pole timber around that I was worried about, but fortunately, she didn’t get wrapped up. She ran parallel to the left of the boat. She tried and came back to the motor, then came back next to the boat. She hadn’t broke water, and when she came past, I saw her, about 3 feet down. When I saw her, she came up past her gill plates, shook three times and went down. Kenny said, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s a double-digit.’”

Boating the bass

Bean said the bass rolled onto her side and he was able to pull her close to the boat, and Bailey was able to reach down, grab the big fish by the lower jaw and hoist her into Bean’s Phoenix bass boat.

His immediate response?

“I sat down and caught my breath for 2 or 3 minutes,” he said. “I’d never caught a 10 before – I’ve had 9s and plenty of 8s – on all these trips to (Lake) Fork and Falcon (Lake). We didn’t weigh it right away, we put it in the livewell. Then, I weighed it on a set of Bubba scales I had in the boat, and it was 11.73.”

At that point, the fishing trip ended. Bean and Bailey battened down all the hatches and raced to Buckeye Landing to get the fish’s certified weight – it was the first fish in 2025 to qualify for the Toledo Bend Lunker Program and the 15th of the 2024-2025 season, which began last June 1.

“I had fished a couple of other places first, in other drains,” said Bean, who recently retired after a 34-year career in law enforcement. “There was a little bait at the mouth of this one, and I went on back, looking to see if I could see more bait, but I didn’t. There were just some free-roamers (bass) back in there. They haven’t been clinging to bait balls.”