Last Tuesday, April 1, when Bradley Korman called home to tell family members about the huge bass he’d caught at Toledo Bend, they had a reaction that might have been expected.
“They thought it was an April Fools’ joke,” said Korman, 28, from Groves, Texas, who had wrestled an 11.14-pound lunker from the huge reservoir on the Louisiana-Texas border.
The next day, Tim Willis, 60, from Oakdale, didn’t have the same problem. Nobody showed any doubt when he told them about the 11.29-pound hawg that also came from Toledo Bend, the 60th fish of the 2024-25 season that weighed in double figures and qualified for the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program.
A quick catch
Korman, who went out just for a short evening fishing trip, caught his fish at 5 p.m., barely after he’d dropped his boat in the water. Fishing in Housen Bay, working a wacky-rigged Senko on a Falcon Bucoo rod and Shimano Curado reel spooled with 15-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon, he ran into her in some duck grass.
“I was fishing a windy bank, a big flat where the inside of the grass line was about 4 or 5 feet deep,” he said. “When she hit it, I thought she was a carp, because there have been a lot of carp up in real shallow water. I didn’t see it was a bass until it got closer to the boat.
“She hit fairly quickly. I let (the Senko) sink to the bottom and popped it once, and that’s when she hit. When she started stripping drag, I knew it was a big fish. I played her for about 30 seconds, then she went under the boat and got tangled up in the grass. I finally got her loose, and she ran a little more. Then, she turned on her side, and I netted her. It wasn’t an easy catch; she fought pretty hard.”
Getting the accurate weight
Korman was a little surprised when he put her on a set of digital scales in his boat.
“I honestly thought she’d go about 9 ½ (pounds), but when I weighed her on my scales, she was 10.3 and 10.5,” he said. “Then, I weighed her again right before I took her to the certified scales (at Toledo Bend Tackle), and she weighed 11.05. I don’t know what happened the first time.
“She was a healthy looking fish, not beat up at all. I think she was prespawn. Obviously, she had a big belly, but she was a big fish in general.”
Korman said the fish, his personal best, was 27 inches long and 20 inches in girth.
A productive spot
Willis was fishing in the Indian Mounds area with fishing buddy Monty Engels of Pitkin, when he pitched a watermelon/red Zoom trick worm into shallow water off a little point that was close to deep water.
“About two weeks ago, I’d had one break my line in there,” Willis said. “And we had caught fish on this spot earlier in the day, so it was our second round on that spot.
“I throw a trick worm about year round, and I was twitching it along, and she bit on the second bounce. At first, I thought it was a catfish, because she just sat down on the bottom. I told my buddy it had to be a catfish, but when she came up out of the water, everything changed.”
Fishing a Pride rod and Shimano Metanium reel filled with 17-pound Seaguar, Willis watched the fish swim towards deep water, going under the boat.
“She jumped about 10 feet from where she hit, and I’ve caught an 8-pounder, and Monty has too, and after she jumped, he said, ‘Oh my God,’ and he grabbed the net,” Willis said.
The fun wasn’t nearly finished. While the bass was under the boat, it kept darting this way and that. Engels was on his knees, his hand sticking between Willis’s feet to turn the trolling motor on and off as the fish changed directions – to keep her out of the propeller.
“We were out in 14 or 15 feet of water when I finally pulled her up,” Willis said. “She laid over on her side, and he dipped her in the net.”
Time to celebrate
Willis and Engels weighed the fish (11.2 pounds) on a set of digital scales, then got it safely into the livewell, then sat down and took a number of deep breaths.
“We were just sitting there talking; it was the first time either one of us had seen a fish that big,” he said. “We were trying to put everything together. We had her at Fin & Feather in about an hour. We had to go back to the landing, put the boat on the trailer and drive there.”
At Fin & Feather Resort, the fish weighed 11.29 pounds, was 25 inches long and 20 inches in girth. Willis believes the fish had already spawned. He said its tail was healed over, and it didn’t appear to be full of eggs.
