At 2,800 acres, Lake Alan Henry near Lubbock, Texas, isn’t exactly a big reservoir by Lone Star State standards. But what it lacks in size it sure makes up for in yielding oversize largemouth bass.
The lake record is Billy Greeson’s 2006 15-pounder. In 2020, Blake Cockrell caught a 14.36-pound Share Lunker largemouth from the reservoir. And perhaps most famous of all is the 14.78-pound Share Lunker bass that Ross Gomez caught three separate times there from 2023 to 2026.
Learning the Lake
That kind of bass fishing got the attention of New Mexico’s Russell Hessen. So Hessen, his wife Christine, and 15-year-old son Colton all trailered their Triton 21-foot bass boat nearly 200 miles to fish Alan Henry for a few days in mid-April.
“The first day we fished we caught a few bass, but it was kind of slow,” Russell told Wired2fish. “The next day (April 20) was a little misty, rainy and 55 degrees when we started.
“We’d never fished the lake previously, so we were lake hopping around trying to find bass and get familiar with the reservoir.”
Strategic Maneuvering Pays Off
The 49-year-old angler said the water temperature was 67 degrees and bedding bass were in shallow water. He maneuvered his Triton near a steep bank in about seven feet of water.
“I saw a fish boil the surface and I made a cast to it with a 3/8-ounce Strike King Swim Jig in bluegill color,” said Russell, who works for the Conoco Phillips company. “A heavy fish smashed the jig, but it didn’t really fight that hard and I didn’t think it was too big — until my son saw the fish when I got it close to the boat.
“He said, ‘Dad, that’s a 10-pounder!’ and I knew it was a better bass than I originally believed.”
The fish tried getting under their boat several times. But using a stout spinning rod and 15-pound test fluorocarbon line, Russell worked the bass close, and then Colton netted it and brought it aboard.
An Impressive Catch
They quickly weighed the 24.5-inch-long bass on a Bubba scale they had, and saw that it was more than nine pounds.
“It started raining harder and I wanted to get it weighed on certified scales because it was my personal best bass ever,” Russell explained. “So, we put her in our livewell, drove back to the boat ramp, loaded the Triton, and headed to a nearby fish camp.”
They went to Bubba’s Beer & Bait, where the certified scales declared that Russell’s fish weighed 9.3 pounds — not a lake record, but a giant largemouth by any measure. And certainly a fish to make anyone proud.
The weighed bass went back into the Triton’s livewell, and the Hessen family returned to the lake to release it into Alan Henry.
They made a video of releasing the bass that will make a great visual memory of the family fishing trip for years to come.
“She swam away fast and strong, hopefully right back onto her nest for spawning,” said Russell. “Maybe someone else can catch her in a year or two, and she’ll be even heavier than when I caught her.”
