Christopher Ore of Otis visited Toledo Bend Reservoir for the first time this year on Sunday afternoon, pre-fishing for an upcoming tournament with fishing buddy Eric Chisholm of Alexandria.
Their first stop?
“We were looking for areas that didn’t have any other boats,” said Ore, a 40-year-old prison employee. “We wanted to target places with less-pressured fish.”
That idea worked out in spades for Ore, who landed a 12.51-pound bass around 1 p.m. It is the heaviest bass to qualify for the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program in 2026, heck, the biggest for the whole 2025-26 season, which began late last spring.
The enormous pre-spawn fish was 26 ⅝ inches long and 21 inches in girth. It hit a big, Texas-rigged worm fished on a Falcon rod and Lew’s LT1 reel spooled with 17-pound Strike King Contra line.
“This is absolutely my biggest bass ever,” Ore said. “Before, I had an 11.12 from (Lake) Kincaid. This will be my first ‘replica’ fish.”
For catching a double-digit fish and having it weighed on certified scales at Buckeye Marina, Ore will receive a replica mount from the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program. Ore’s huge fish is the 41st to qualify in the 2025-26 season and only the second fish to crack the 12-pound mark.
A small brush pile
Fishing in a mid-lake area, Ore and Chisholm pulled into a quiet area they had fished before and started searching for a familiar brush pile in 10 feet of water.
“It was just a little piece of brush; it might have even been the end of a couple of laydowns on the bottom,” Ore said. “We knew the area, and I knew we were pretty close to where the brush was, so both of us were throwing in there to try and find it.
“I made a long cast and worked it about halfway back to the boat when I felt a little tap and set the hook hard. Right away, she had me hung up in the brush. I just held on, wanting her to swim out. When she did come out, she shot straight up, came out of the water and shook with that big mouth open. My partner and I looked at each other and both of us said, ‘That’s her.’”
Ore kept pressure on the fish, occasionally pushing the button to give the bass some line; he was afraid that the line had been frayed by the brush and didn’t want a break off, not with a monster on the other end of the line.
“After she came up, she kept trying to shoot back to the bottom, and I gave her some line a couple of times,” he said. “She wasn’t really far from the boat when she hit, and when I got her close to the boat, she pulled me around the trolling motor, and Eric lipped her on the other side of the boat from where I’d hooked her.”
Getting the fish weighed
Ore was so shaken by the sight of the huge fish that he was, well, shaking.
“I couldn’t stop shaking,” he said. “He had to take the hook out for me. I said, ‘I finally got my replica.’ When we got her in, I got a good look at her, and I knew she was bigger than my 11-pounder. I figured she was 12.”
A quick visit to a set of portable scales in his boat confirmed that – the fish tipped the scales at 12.3.
“After we put her in the livewell, he reminded me it was Sunday, and I was afraid some of the weigh-in places would be closed,” Ore said. “I googled Buckeye, called them, and the guy who answered said he was about to close, but he had a guy who could be there, so we took off.”
At Buckeye, the bass was officially measured and weighed – 12.51 was the certified weight – then tagged and released.
“It was beautiful (to watch),” Ore said. “She swam away so strong. She was full of eggs, but she hadn’t done any spawning at all. She was probably staging out there in 10 feet of water, getting ready.”
