Ah, the second chance. How many of us take advantage of a reprieve from some kind of disappointment?
Landon “Hunter” Despino of Natchez was never really disappointed when he broke off a bass on Saturday, Feb. 22, at Toledo Bend.
First, he had no idea how big the fish might have been; his line broke, basically, on the hookset. No throwing the hook on a great jump clear of the surface, no glimpse of a big, green fish darting under the trolling motor and breaking off. No feeling of heft or strength.
“She took off with it, and as soon as I set the hook, she snapped the line,” he said. “It was so quick I didn’t even feel her.”
Second, he and his partner won the Toledo Bend Bass Series tournament they were fishing that day, with a 5-fish limit that weighed 20 pounds, 11 ounces, so the disappointment of losing one fish of unknown size was sort of eliminated by $4,000 in prize money.
Until this past Thursday, Feb. 27. That’s when Despino looked into the mouth of the biggest bass he’d ever caught and saw something. There, down in the fish’s throat, was his hook from the previous weekend. Not only was it the kind of worm hook he was using during the tournament, the fish was in the same brush pile where he’d hooked it on Feb. 22.
“And it was the exact knot I tie,’ Despino said. “It was down in her throat, halfway to her crushers. So when I set the hook, the line was down in her mouth, and she cut it with her teeth.”
A happy ending? You bet. The bass with Despino’s jig in the corner of her mouth and the worm hook way down deep weighed 12.15 pounds.
Trolling motor trouble
Despino caught the fish because he had trolling motor trouble that day.
He set out on Thursday afternoon to scout out the upper end of the lake for a couple of upcoming tournaments. Then, his trolling motor started acting up. He weighed things in his mind and decided to put his boat on the trailer and get the trolling motor looked at.
“I drove to mid-lake, to Toledo Fiberglass; they work on boats. I called, and they were closing at 5, so I made it,” he said. “They took the trolling motor apart, then put it together and told me to go see if I could make it act up again. They have a little landing behind them, so I put in there and ran to this one brush pile.”
It was the brush pile where he’d broken off a fish around 2:50 on the afternoon of Feb. 22. It sits in about 15 feet of water, and Despino said it’s a productive spot.
“I know there’s been a 9(-pounder) and a 10-(pounder) caught off that brush in the last 5 years, said Despino, who had one rod out on his casting deck: a 7-foot-6, heavy action Hammer rod with a Lew’s Custom Pro reel spooled with 20-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon.
“I made one flip,” he said. “I threw in there, and she started swimming off. I set the hook, but I had my drag loosened up. I cranked it down and set the hook again, and all hell broke loose.”
A big fish
At one point in the brief battle, the fish tried swimming under Despino’s trolling motor – the one that set all this in motion – and he got a good look at her.
“I figured she was about an 8(-pounder) because she was short,” he said. “I was trying to get to my net, and I had the button pushed and my thumb on my reel, and she jumped. I just heard the splash. But then I got the net and she came up and rolled onto her side, and I could see her girth.”
He ran back to Toledo Fiberglass, put his boat on the trailer and started looking for a place to get the fish weighed on certified scales for the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program – which awards anglers catching double-digit bass with free replica mounts. At Keith’s Toledo Bend Tackle, he had the fish weighed at 12.15 pounds and measured at 23 ¾ long and 22-plus inches in girth.
“If that fish had been 25 (inches), like most 10s, I have no idea what it might have weighed,” Despino said. “These fish are super healthy right now. When we won the tournament last Saturday, we didn’t know we had 20 pounds, because we had all 17-inch fish. But they wound up being all 4-pounders.”
Lunker program
Despino’s fish was released alive back into the lake after the weighing, measuring and paperwork were completed, leaving him wondering how circumstances worked out.
“I was never supposed to be there,” he said. “If I hadn’t had trolling motor trouble, I’d have been 45 minutes up the lake. You can’t make this up. If everything had gone right, I’d have been way up the lake, way up in the river, looking for fish.”
The feat even exceeded Despino killing a 160-inch whitetail buck on a Texas lease last fall.
“I’ll take that 12-pounder every day,” he said. “I’ve caught a 9.30 and a 9.60, but this is my first fish in the lunker program. It’s my first really big one.”
