Lunker bit weedless frog and was released back into the lake
Beverly Rogers Brister of Farmerville has a fish story that’s even bigger than the bass she caught on Lake D’Arbonne Tuesday — and that makes it a mighty good one.
Brister landed a 24-inch, 11.78-pound hawg on a weedless frog — during her maiden voyage in a kayak, while fishing a frog for the first time ever.
She and her husband Dwain purchased the ‘yaks about a year ago, but she had never actually fished from one. But a bad day on Tuesday prompted her to hit the water after slight modifications to the Serenity Prayer:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and . . . I’m just going fishing.”
So she grabbed only two lures and got in the kayak. Thankfully at the last minute, she decided to take a net — just in case.
She paddled around in a big weed bed casting in some likely looking spots and had a couple of hits, but didn’t catch one. She was getting disheartened again and feeling bored when she noticed Dwain in the back yard planting tomato plants.
“I was about to quit and go help him, but I decided to make just a couple more casts,” she said. “On the last one, I was fishing the bait across the weeds and all of a sudden the water exploded. He pulled me around for a minute and I yelled for Dwain to come watch me catch this big fish.
“By that time, he had a big wad of grass on the end of the line and my husband thought I was hung up or I was pranking him. I was just laughing because I had seen the fish. I don’t know why I was laughing so hard. About that time, the big fish jumped and he saw it. I finally wrestled it into the dip net and got it up on the bank. I tell you, that fish took me for quite a ride in that kayak.”
Her husband quickly retrieved a scale to weigh the monster.
“By that time I was shaking I was so excited. The biggest bass I had ever caught before that was 5 or 6 pounds and I thought it was a whopper,” she said. “God just smiled on me Tuesday. He showed me not to quit, no matter the circumstances.”
The Bristers kept the fish in a live net overnight before deciding to return it to the lake Wednesday morning.
