For the record, Eric Pledger of Timpson, Texas, caught a 12.98-pound bass in last Saturday’s Fishers of Men tournament on Toledo Bend. It was the second lunker of the year to qualify for the Toledo Bend Lunker Program for double-digit fish, and it helped Pledger and his partner, Stephen Burgay, win the tournament with a 5-fish limit that weighed 32.8 pounds, plus the big-fish pot, netting them more than $8,000.
Off the record, in all likelihood, Pledger really had a 13-pound fish in his livewell. The monster, 27 inches long and 20 inches in girth, weighed 13.08 on a set of hand-held, digital scales just before Pledger dropped her in the livewell. Seven hours later, at the tournament weigh-in at SRA Park at Pendleton Bridge, the big fish weighed about 3/8ths of an ounce less.
“I caught her at about 8 in the morning, and we didn’t weigh in until 3 in the afternoon,” Pledger said. “She did spit up a little bit (in the livewell).”
The big fish was the second of the day that came over the gunwales into Pledger and Burgay’s boat. Five minutes later, Burgay had a 7-pounder in the boat, giving the pair three fish that weighed about 23 pounds. They filled out their limit with a bite that was steady all day. They caught everything on Rat-L-Traps, almost all on a discontinued crawfish pattern, the big fish on a chrome bait with a purple belly.
“We had a good sack, maybe 25 or 26 pounds without that big fish,” he said. “We had a good many quality fish. We worked this one 200- or 300-yard edge of (hydrilla) all day. We’d catch two or three, then have a little lull, then turn around and catch one or two, then turn around and go back the other direction. It wasn’t fast and furious, but it wasn’t slow. It was consistent.”
Productive grass line
Pledger found the grass a couple of weeks ago while helping his daughter prefish for a high-school tournament. He went back last Friday and caught a couple of 2-pound fish, then moved a bit and found the more productive grass line.
“There was a little drain between two points, and a flat came out to the edge, with grass all along the drop-off,” he said. “The grass is really healthy, all the way down to 15-18 feet of water. We caught all our fish in 7 to 12 feet of water, just burning Rat-L-Traps past the grass. It was typical Trap fishing. If you don’t fish a Trap at Sam Rayburn or Toledo Bend this time of year, you’re in trouble.”
When his big fish hit, Pledger was fishing a Lew’s Mach 2 rod, with a Lew’s reel spooled with 15-pound Seaguar.
“I felt one hit, but there was nothing there, so I continued to work it, popping it, letting it fall, then burning it, and I felt a tick,” he said, setting the hook. “I never imagined she was as big as she was. She came up and pulled some drag, and I punched the button to give her some line. The first time we could see her, my partner said, ‘She’s a 10, don’t lose her.’ She went to the back of the boat, and I turned her, and she came to the boat, right into the net – just like you’d draw it up on paper.
“When she came by the first time, she was close enough that I could see her real good, you couldn’t see the Trap. She had swallowed it. That’s when I got worried that she was going to rub the line across her teeth. But she came in real quick for a fish that size. It probably only took a minute-and-a-half, 2 minutes. When my partner flipped her in the boat in the net, he said, ‘She’s a 13.’”
Fishers of Men record
At that point, Pledger admitted, “two grown men started acting like kids.” But about the time Pledger dropped her in the livewell and closed the lid, Burgay was already back on the casting deck, working the grass.
Pledger said that after the weigh-in, Dick Polk, the tournament director, told him that the 12.98-pound fish was the biggest ever caught in a Fishers of Men tournament, dating back to the circuit’s formation in 1998. Polk confirmed that earlier this week, saying that Pledger’s fish broke the previous record, caught by pro Darold Gleason, by about a half-pound.
“We really love this (Fishers of Men) circuit,” Pledger said. “We’ve been fishing them for years.”
