At 8 a.m. on March 27, the clock struck midnight for three huge Toledo Bend bass.
According to Greg Burgess of DeQuincy, Ryan Pinkston of Center, Texas, and Michael Kloske of Petal, Miss., all three of them set the hook on big bass right at 8 o’clock in the morning. All three were boated, and all three easily broke the double-digit threshold required to qualify for the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program.
Burgess’s fish weighed 11.28 pounds; Pinkston’s was 11.91 and Kloske’s was the biggest at 12.12 pounds. The Burgess and Pinkston lunkers came from Housen Bay, while Kloske’s came from 6-Mile Creek. All three hit soft-plastic, moving baits: a Senko (Burgess), a 6th Sense Flush 7.5 (Pinkston) and a Zoom Speed Worm (Kloske).
Burgess gets his bass
Fishing by himself, Burgess actually found his fish late Wednesday afternoon, right before he quit fishing for the day. The area was his first stop on Thursday morning, and he pulled out a Lew’s rod and reel spooled with 12-pound Sunlight Super, with a black/blue Senko rigged wacky style.
“I Power-Poled down about 30 or 40 yards from where I’d seen her and started fan-casting,” he said. “I caught the male first and let him go. He weighed about 4 pounds. Then I caught her about 40 casts later. I didn’t know where she was, exactly.”
Burgess’s boat was sitting in a grass bed, and when she grabbed the Senko and he set the hook, the fish made one good jump and then headed for the hydrilla.
“I was worried that I’d lose her in the grass, but she came out and swam out into the middle of the pocket I was fishing,” he said. “I just followed her on the trolling motor and netted her. I was relieved to get her in the net.”
Burgess put the fish on a set or portable scales he had in his boat, and according to the scales, the bass weighed 10.13 pounds. He ran to Fin & Feather Resort to get the fish officially weighed, measured, tagged and released. On certified scales, the fish weighed 11.28.
Burgess was thrilled and dismayed at the same time.
“It took some time, but this was my first fish over 10,” he said. “I caught a 9-something (Wednesday); my scales said 9.06. I wish I had taken it to Fin & Feather, because my scales said the big fish weighed 10.13 and it really weighed 11.28, then I might have caught a 10 (Wednesday).”
After his big fish was released, Burgess, a 52-year-old plant operator, headed back to Housen and caught about 30 more fish, including two in the 6-pound range.
“She hadn’t been (shallow) very long; I’m amazed how many fish had moved up,” he said. “I’ve never seen them move up that fast; it’s usually a trickle deal. But in the Indian Mound area, I couldn’t go 20 yards without seeing one up shallow.”
Pinkston adds third big fish to his resume
Pinkston, 44, a guide with Southern Waters Guide Service, felt the same way about March 27 that Burgess did.
“Today, it just switched on,” he said. “I can’t tell you why, but the big fish were ready to bite. I’ve been telling everybody that we were about to be in the middle of the second big wave of fish moving in, and it happened all of the sudden.”
Pinkston was guiding two fishermen when he pulled up on a 100-yard stretch of bank in Housen Bay at 8 a.m. He had spotted a little point that broke up an otherwise featureless stretch of bank and aimed his first casts there, fishing a Lew’s rod and reel spooled with 20-pound Strike King Contra and a shad-colored 6th Sense Flush 7.5 fished weightless on a 6/0 hook.
“Out of that 100-yard stretch of bank, my first cast was to that little point,” he said. “I’d let it settle down – it wasn’t any more than 2 to 4 feet of water – and I picked it up one time, and it had that weight, that feeling, so I set the hook.
“Right away, she jumped out of the water, but she was at the end of my cast, so I immediately knew it was a big fish, an 8- or a 9-(pounder). She got closer to the boat, and she jumped again, and that’s when I said, ‘That’s a 10.’ Then she got closer and came up and wallowed and then went back down. She went to digging – that’s when you lose most of them. I couldn’t get her back up, but I finally got her coming up, and one of the guys had the net, and he saw her coming up and jabbed the net down there when she was like 3 feet deep. I was thinking, ‘Oh, no!’ but he scooped her right up. I was excited, but those guys were freaking out.”
Pinkston’s fish, weighed and measured at Fin & Feather, went 11.91 pounds, 26 ½ inches long and 20 ½ inches in girth. It was his third big Toledo Bend bass; his biggest was a 14.62-pound monster caught in February 2012, and he’s got another 12-pounder to his credit.
“This fish, she was clean,” he said. “I don’t know if she was just cruising, because I didn’t go up to look and see if there was a bed. She was in 3 or 4 feet of water, with some scattered grass. But she was on that little bump on a straight bank, a little subtle thing.”
First trip is magic for Kloske
Kloske was fishing Toledo Bend for the first time, on a 4-day adventure with buddy Jeff Bansbach of Columbia, Miss., to fish a Wednesday-Thursday tournament. Bansbach had fished Toledo Bend previously, and he caught the trip’s first big fish, an 8 ½-pounder, on Tuesday.
“We fished in 6-Mile Creek, because we put in there,” said Kolske, a 62-year-old retired UPS driver. “We fished on Monday and Tuesday, then the tournament was Wednesday and Thursday. We weighed in 44.55 pounds in two days: 18.31 on Wednesday and 26.24 on Thursday.”
At 8 a.m., Kloske and Bansbach were throwing at a small area of hydrilla, growing about 3 feet off the bottom in 6 feet of water. Kloske was fishing a blackberry Zoom Speed worm, Texas-rigged on a 3/0 hook with a ¼-ounce Tungsten weight, on a 7-foot Bass Pro Shops rod and a Lew’s reel spooled with 15-pound fluorocarbon.
“I was throwing it and working it over the grass, just fast enough to feel it keep ticking the top of the grass – with a Speed Worm, it’s all about that tail,” Kloske said. “I never saw her, just felt her. I didn’t really see her until we got her in the boat. She never jumped, and when I got her close, I walked her all the way around the boat two times to wear her out. I knew she was a big fish, but I had no idea she was that big. She was in good shape; she was a beautiful fish.”
After the tournament weigh-in, Kloske weighed the fish at Keith’s Toledo Bend Tackle; he remembered that the big hog’s girth was 21 inches before it was tagged and released back into the lake.
Kloske’s previous big fish was a 6-pound, 12-ounce bass.
