As great as the 2024-25 season on Toledo Bend has been for bass fishermen, John Buffalow of Milam, Texas, who has guided on the lake for more than 30 years, wonders what might have been.
Buffalow and 13-year-old Karden Cooley of DeRidder, La., sacked huge bass on Thursday, April 24, bringing to 70 the number of double-digit bass caught this time around – the biggest number since 72 in 2016-17 – with a month before the season ends.
“I think it’s been a real poor spring,” he said. “I’m not pointing any fingers, but the lake level has fluctuated so much during the spawn. They raise it, drop it a foot, raise it and drop it. Now, it’s high – where it’s supposed to be – but those fish are all gone.”
Well, not quite all of them. Buffalow took advantage of the higher, fresh water to land an 11.57-pound post-spawn beast that was 25 ½ inches long and 20 inches in girth. The fish had pushed up shallow to eat shad, and instead, it ate his watermelon red Zoom Brush Hog – with the tail dyed chartreuse – at about 9:30 a.m. near a bridge almost within sight of Keith’s Toledo Bend Tackle, where he got the bass weighed, measured and entered in the Toledo Bend Lunker Bass Program.
“She had a pretty good belly; I caught her in about 3 feet of water, fishing down a little bank where I usually catch some good fish,” he said. “She was up in that shallow water, gorging herself. When she came up one time, she spit up a shad about 3 or 4 inches long. I knew she had moved up to feed – they’re moving up, feeding and moving off. Her belly was full. I think she probably spawned about 6 weeks ago.”
A reaction bite
Fishing with Preston Massey, Buffalow made a cast and said the fish grabbed the bait almost as soon as it hit the water.
“It had to be a reaction bite,” he said. “We had a tournament the next day and were out looking for fish. It was sort of slow; we caught seven or eight. After that one, I caught a 4 ½ pounder maybe 10 feet away.”
Buffalow was fishing a 7-foot GLoomis rod and Lew’s reel spooled with 15-pound Trilene Big Game.
“When I set the hook, she peeled some line off,” he said. “I fought her about 2 or 3 minutes, which is a lot for a bass. She went around the boat twice and came up twice. I finally brought her to the boat and (Massey) reached down and lifted her up.
“When she came up out of the water, I told him, ‘That’s a 10-pound fish.’ I’ve caught bigger fish – 12.38 is my biggest at Toledo Bend, but she fought harder than that 12.”
Buffalow and Massey didn’t have a set of scales in their boat, but about 100 yards down the bank, a woman “popped out” on a pier and asked if they needed a scale.
“If the fish wasn’t 10 pounds, she wanted us to release him right there, under her pier,” Buffalow said. “We put her on the scales and it read 11.30. We were near the bridge, so we ran to Keith’s, pulled up, weighed her and put her back in.
“She was blind in one eye. I think she was an old fish.”
Big bass for Cooley
About two hours later, Cooley, an 8th grader at East Beauregard High School, hooked his big fish dragging a Carolina-rigged, watermelon Senko through some grass on a bank in the lower end of the lake.
The fish was on a ledge – in 8 feet of water with the boat sitting in 16 – and Karden Cooley made a long cast and started to pull his Senko through the grass when he stopped.
“I thought I was hung up, but my brother (Karter) said, ‘No, set the hook,’” Karden Cooley said. “I did, and when I started reeling, she jumped. She was huge. She made one jump, then she dove under the boat and tried to swim away.”
Fishing a Lew’s rod and reel spooled with 15-pound Trilene, he wore the fish down until it could be netted.
“It was really exciting,” he said. “I was dragging (the Senko) and fishing it at the same time, dragging it through the grass. I didn’t feel her when she hit it. It was a full cast away from the boat.”
On spring break from school and spending the week at Toledo Bend, the Cooleys took the fish to Buckeye Landing, where it weighed 10.87 pounds and measured 26 ¾ inches long and 19 ½ inches in girth.
“She was flat-bellied,” Karlos Cooley, Karden’s dad, said. “I wonder what she would have weighed if she’d been full of eggs.”
