Sid Wilde of Robert is thanking his lucky stars that Bussey Brake Reservoir in Morehouse Parish is a busy place in the spring.
That’s because the 2,200-acre lake’s popularity with bass fishermen led directly to Wilde catching a new lake record on Friday, March 8, a monster of a bass that weighed 15.78 pounds.
Wilde and his son, Jaylon, had fished for 2 ½ hours that afternoon after fishing all morning before taking a lunch break after getting just one bite. They were fishing close to the boat landing at almost 5:30, ready to call it a day — but not quite.
“We were fishing close to the boat launch, and we could see there were boats crowded all around it,” Sid Wilde said. “I told my son, ‘There’s no need to get impatient,’ so we kept fishing, waiting until it wasn’t as busy. And about two minutes later, I caught this fish.”
“This fish” was the fourth-heaviest ever caught in Louisiana, according to the Louisiana Outdoor Writers Association, which keeps the state’s fishing record books. It measured 27 inches long and was 23 ½ inches in girth.
First time fishing Bussey
Weighed on certified scales at the lake — which the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries took over from International Paper in 2013, subsequently closed and completely revamped before reopening in 2020 — Wilde’s fish broke the record set on Feb. 26, 2023 by Robert Rush of Crosset, Ark., a 15.36-pounder. And it’s only about 3 ounces shy of Greg Wiggins’ 15.97-pound state-record bass from Caney Lake, caught in February 1994.
“If that bass had eaten two more crawfish before I caught her, I’d have the state record,” joked Wilde, who had never fished Bussey Brake before that day.
“This was my first time ever here,” he said. “My son has fished here more than me. He caught a couple of 9-pounders last year. We came up for the weekend, camped in the (Chemin-A-Haut) state park. We only caught four fish the whole weekend — but you don’t go there for numbers.”
A broken tree top
Wilde was fishing a Netbait Paca Craw, a 5-inch soft-plastic crawfish bait, in Alabama Craw color, on a G. Loomis rod and Shimano Curado reel spooled with 50-pound Power Pro braid. He said the huge bass was sitting at the base of a “broke-down” tree in about 6 feet of water. The tree was broken over about three feet above the water’s surface, with the top leaning down at a 45-degree angle. He pitched right past the broken tree top to the base of the tree.
“She was sitting right on the bottom; she sucked it up, and the battle was on,” he said. “When she hit, she hit it good. She made a pass by the motor and went under the boat. I went down to my knees so the rod wouldn’t break off on the boat — man, a 15-pound bass can pull. I got her to come back up, got her to the side of the boat, and my son got her in the net on the first pass.”
Wilde was astounded — and stunned.
“I never saw the fish until she was in the net,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like that. I thought I was going to throw up; I got sick to my stomach. We’re from south Louisiana, where a 5- or 6-pounder is a good fish. I’m 64 years old, and my biggest was a 6-14.”
Something special
Wilde and his son headed for the boat landing and the lake’s office, where they found a sign bearing a phone number to call to get instructions on weighing the fish. They got the certified scales and weighed and measured the fish, taking a video to use as evidence of the certified weight.
“We knew we had something special,” Wilde said. “We had a hand-held digital scale in the boat, and when we got on land — we didn’t take a chance on having it flip off into the water — and we got 15.76 pounds. We knew the lake record was 15.3, so we thought that unless something was terribly wrong, it would be the lake record for sure.”
The certified scales gave Wilde’s fish an extra .02 pounds – roughly 3/16th of an ounce — and Bussey Brake anglers will have a little higher goal from here on.
