Top 5 stories of 2024

Bass dominate most-read stories on site

Louisiana’s outdoor scene certainly wasn’t lacking in newsworthy stories throughout the past year. It seemed like a month didn’t go by without something of great interest to hunters and fishermen taking place — some good news, some bad news and some just plain interesting.

So we researched the archives of LouisianaSportsman.com and came up with the 5 best-read news stories of the year.

5. Double-digit Bussey Brake double

By Dan Kibler

Jarrett Gomez was thrilled, yes, ecstatic, when his digital scales registered 10.00 when he weighed a bass he caught on Saturday morning, April 13, at Bussey Brake, the 2,600-acre reservoir near Bastrop that has become Big Bass Central since it re-opened in July 2020.

“I was really pumped up,” Gomez said after he hooked the big fish out of a bush on a black/blue, Texas-rigged Bronco Bug – especially after his brother-in-law, Bruce Bellew, got it in the net the first time the bass got near the boat.

After a few photos, Gomez had the big bass – which broke his personal record by about 2 pounds – back in the water and on its way to freedom.

Jarrett Gomez hooked this 12.12-pound bass with a green pumpkin Bronco Bug at Bussey Brake Reservoir on April 13.

Gomez didn’t know it, but the best was yet to come. Around 12:30, as he and Bellew were talking about hanging it up for the day to meet their wives in Monroe, he flipped another Bronco Bug – this one green pumpkin because he ran out of black/blue – at a laydown log. A minute or so later, he was admiring an even bigger bass, one that another fisherman at Bussey Brake’s boat ramp weighed at 12.12 pounds on his set of scales.

Read the full story here.

4. Dark, Struben catch probable record five-bass limit on Caney Lake

By Don Shoopman

Talk about a bassy “high five.”

Two West Monroe bass fishin’ buddies fished Caney Lake on Dec. 28 and shook up the bass fishing world near and far with a five-bass limit they say should be the heaviest ever recorded in the Sportsman’s Paradise. Those “hawgs” weighed as much as nearly 51 pounds on one scale and as low as 48 ½ pounds on another scale.

Colby Dark, 18, and Gage Struben, 19, who took a break from pre-fishing for their first major tournaments of 2024, wet a line back-to-back days the last week of December. They believe their limit the second day reigns as the top weight for five bass in Louisiana.

Read the full story here.

3. Traffic jam at boat ramp leads to new Bussey Brake record bass

By Dan Kibler

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.”

Read the full story here.

2. LWFC hears troubling news on feral hogs

By Joe Curtis

Feral swine numbers are not declining and are possibly increasing in Louisiana.

Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commissioners heard the troubling news at their monthly meeting on Thursday, Nov. 7, by Veterinarian Dr. Rusty Berry.

Rough estimates number the feral swine at more than 900,000 in Louisiana with the outlawed quadruped in all 64 parishes. The pigs are not only a Louisiana problem. The World Health Organization recognized feral swine as the number one invasive species in the world.

“As a veterinarian who has lived in Louisiana for 65 years and has seen feral swine since a kid, I want you to consider that 900,000 plus number is most likely very low,” Berry warned commissioners.

Read the full story here.

1. Sabine River surprise

By Kinny Haddox

Terry Brack caught a 15-pound largemouth bass while fishing a LiveTarget Erratic Shiner on the Sabine River.

Terry Brack was just a regular fisherman doing what regular fishermen do. He went to a spot where he thought he could catch some fish, threw a lure he knew would catch fish, and fished hard for three hours. That was also without a bite, except for two small goo. The fish obviously weren’t biting and he had just about made up his mind to go home.

Then he did something regular fishermen don’t do.

Standing on the shore of the turbine channel below the humongous Toledo Bend Reservoir dam, Brack hooked into a totally unexpected fish of a lifetime — a 15 pound largemouth bass that, if certified, will literally blow the old Sabine River bass record slap out of the water. The fish was 26.5 inches long.

“I had literally just decided it was time to go home when the big fish hit,” Brack said. “I was fishing for hybrids. Usually when they have the turbines running wide open, you can catch all you want. But they weren’t biting. But when I stuck this big fish, I thought it was just a big goo. It didn’t come up and it just felt like a big old brick as I reeled it in. It was a long way out and in fairly deep water and when it got to shore, it just went belly up. When I saw what it was, I was shocked. I’m still amazed by it.”

Read the full story here.