Two days after Thanksgiving, Clay Butler of San Angelo, Texas, and his pal Hunter Crossland were in Butler’s 21-foot Skeeter bass boat, prowling the flooded timber of Mitchell County’s 1,500-acre Champion Creek Reservoir on an overcast 60-degree day.
“It was late afternoon, and we were cruising through sunken timber looking for bass on my sonar,” Butler tells Wired2fish. “I’d caught-and-released an 8-pounder, and a smaller 3-pounder earlier in the day. About 4 p.m. I marked a fish on sonar suspended a few feet off bottom in 18 feet of water. I figured it was a big bass, because heavier fish are suspended deeper than small ones.”
Butler says that higher suspended bass in the old reservoir feed on little threadfin shad, while bigger bass are deeper, targeting bigger gizzard shad.
“The wind was blowing 20 miles per hour, and I had to maneuver the boat to make a good cast to the big fish,” said the 47-year-old construction business owner. “My first cast was off the mark. But my second cast was good, and I let my lure sink straight down to the fish.”
Landing the Big One
Butler then watched his lure sink on sonar. When the roundhead 10-gram jig fitted with a 7-inch soft plastic natural colored minnow was just above the fish, he slowed the lure descent with his spinning tackle.
“I could see her turn and look at the lure on sonar,” he said. “I just shook my rod a bit. She rushed the jig, thumped it hard, and I set the hook.”
The bass never jumped, but Butler and Crossland knew the fish was huge. The hooked bass went up and down in the water column, and around the boat for several minutes. Butler finally got the tired bass to the surface and led it into the net that Crossland held ready.
“Hunter had hurt his arm a couple days earlier and wasn’t able to cast and fish, so he was just along for the ride to get outside,” Butler said. “He had a little trouble working the landing net, but I maneuvered the bass into the open net he held at boatside. Then we hauled the fish into my Skeeter.”
Confirming a Hunch
Both anglers knew it would weigh more than 10 pounds. When Butler put it on his fishing scale, it showed the largemouth was over 12 pounds.
“We knew it was a possible lake record, and we had to get it officially weighed,” said Butler, a dedicated student of bass fishing and a fan of YouTube bass videos. “The store at the boat ramp was closed. So, we put the fish in my boat livewell, loaded the Skeeter onto my trailer and drove an hour to the town of Bronte.”
There’s an official state-sanctioned scale at Bronte Guns & Tackle, which was open and able to weigh Butler’s bass.
The largemouth officially weighed 12.55 pounds, with a 26.75-inch length and 21.5-inch girth. All state record paperwork was filled out and delivered to Texas’ Inland Fisheries Department, which has declared Butler’s bass as a new Champion Creek Reservoir largemouth recordholder.
The lake’s previous record was set in 2005, when Wendell Pinkerton caught a 26-inch-long bass weighing 11.80 pounds.
A Record Catch Swims Free
Butler says he’ll have a replica mount made of his record 12.55-pound bass. After the fish was weighed, he returned to the lake with both Crossland and his catch to release the fish.
“The state requires that record bass be live released, and we did that with my bass,” Butler explains. “We traveled two hours round trip, weighed the fish, and let her go right from the boat ramp dock into Champion Creek. That fish was as frisky as ever, and in great shape. I was thrilled to watch her swim away.”
