It was an early Christmas present for Gene Kidder of Opelousas, Louisiana. On Dec. 18 he was fishing Toledo Bend Reservoir with his son Lane. They’d not caught a fish on that bright 60-degree day until mid-afternoon.
“It was about 3 p.m. and we were running my Skeeter bass boat back to camp, when we made one last stop to work a submerged brush pile we know about in 12-feet of water,” Gene tells Wired2fish. “It was my first cast with an old purple Bagley B2 plug that had been in my tackle box for 20 years.”
The cast lure ticked the brush pile and Kidder felt a strike. But the fish didn’t put up much of a battle, likely because of the cool water in 185,000-acre Toledo Bend. The lake straddles the Texas-Louisiana border southwest of Shreveport, La.
“I thought I was snagged, but the rod thumped and I knew I had a bass,” said Gene, a retired banking loan officer. “It didn’t fight much and I thought it was a catfish until I got it near the boat and we realized it was a bass.”
The anglers had no net, but the bass was whipped and they had no trouble boating the fish by hand. They realized it was over 10 pounds, a first for Gene who’d never caught one that size.
To get an official weight and measurement of Gene’s largemouth they put the fish in their boat’s livewell. Then they ran their Skeeter to nearby Buckeye Landing. There it was officially weighed at 11.9-pounds, with a 20-inch girth and 28.25-inch length.
“My bass had to be weighed alive, tagged and released in order to get a free replica mount of the fish,” Gene said. “I’ll get my mounted bass in June, and I’m now in the ‘Lunker Club’ on Toledo Bend Lake.
The fish was released by the folks at Buckeye Landing, and it swam away healthy and happy.
Gene says the following day his son Lane went out onto Toledo Bend again, this time using his dad’s old blue Bagley B2 plug that he’d caught his nearly 12-pound bass on.
“But he made a cast into a brush pile and lost the plug,” Gene says while chuckling. “Lane didn’t want to tell me he lost the lure, but when he did, we just laughed about it.
“They don’t make that plug any more to replace it. So Lane went on Ebay and found one just like it. I’m gonna put the plug in the mounted bass’ mouth when we get it from the taxidermist in June.”
