The Riney family’s bass catching prowess will be talked about for some time in Arkansas.
Kevin Riney, age 45, was fishing alone on Northeast Arkansas’ Lake Austell in Village Creek State Park On January 10 when he located and caught a bass weighing 12.04 pounds using forward-facing sonar. It’s the first bass over 10-pounds recognized in Arkansas’ new Legacy Lunker Bass program, modeled much like the renown Texas’ Toyota ShareLunker program.
The Arkansas Legacy Lunker Bass Program is a conservation initiative by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission that encourages anglers to donate large, trophy-sized largemouth bass — typically weighing eight pounds or more — for use in a selective breeding program. These donated fish are temporarily housed and spawned at state hatcheries, where their offspring are raised and later stocked into Arkansas waters to improve genetics and increase the potential for producing future trophy bass. After spawning, the adult bass are returned to the lake where they were caught, allowing anglers to contribute directly to the long-term health, quality, and sustainability of Arkansas’s renowned bass fisheries.
Kevin’s son Dylan is a dedicated bass angler too, and he’d been trying hard to catch a fish over 10 pounds to also enter into the Arkansas program. He fished with his dad often trying for a Legacy Lunker, but could “only” manage a couple bass a tad over 9 pounds.
The day Kevin caught his 12-pounder Dylan was working at his steel mill job so he couldn’t fish with his father.
But on Jan. 16, Dylan and his steel mill working buddy Kyle Lochridge returned at dawn to Lake Austell in Dylan’s classic Ranger bass boat determined to land a bass over 10 pounds.
“I know the lake well and using the same forward-facing sonar we found a few big fish,” Dylan, age 20, tells Wired2fish. “Kyle [age 24] and I were using big soft plastic minnow baits on ¼-ounce jig heads imitating the large gizzard shad in Lake Austell.”
The anglers had been on the water since dawn, and Dylan caught-and-released a nice 7.5-pounder that morning. But 10-pound fish eluded them until 10 a.m. when Kyle made a cast to a fish they spotted with sonar.
“I knew it was bigger than the others we’d been seeing, and when he hooked it, we were sure it was huge,” Dylan said. “When it got it close it made a run beside my boat, I went for my net and scooped it up.”
The pair of young anglers started whooping and hollering for joy, said Dylan. They weighed the fish on an accurate Bubba hand scale they had in the boat, and it read 10-pounds, 2-ounces.
Dylan phoned the Arkansas Legacy Lunker Bass folks and reported he had a 10-pounder. Right away Jeremy Risley (the state bass program coordinator) headed Dylan’s way.
Risley would weigh Dylan’s bass to certify the catch. Then he’d take the fish back to a state hatchery where it will be spawned with other genetically large bass to produce bigger-than-average size largemouths for stocking.
“I knew we had a two hour wait for the state folks to reach us to weigh Kyle’s bass, so we went back to fishing the lake,” Dylan said. “We went to the area where Kyle caught his bass, and 45 minutes later I hooked a fish about 10 feet from where Kyle caught his big fish.”
Dylan said Kyle was feeling a little bad that he and not Dylan had caught the state’s second fish in the Arkansas Lunker Bass program – especially since his dad Kevin had caught the first fish in the first year of the program.
But when Dylan hooked his bass at 10:45 a.m., and brought another huge largemouth to his Ranger, and it was netted and weighed on their Bubba scale, the two anglers were ecstatic.
“We were screaming and jumping – just an incredible day when we weighed my bass at over 11 pounds,” Dylan explained.
Jeremy Risley soon arrived at Lake Austell, where he weighed both bass. Kyle’s officially weighed 10.16 pounds, while Dylan’s was 11.65 pounds.
Their bass were taken to Joe Hogan State Fish Hatchery in Lonoke, Ark. for spawning. Sometime next year the anglers will be notified that their spawned-out lunker bass will be returned to Lake Austell. They then can meet biologists with the fish to release them back into the lake where they were caught.
“The first three bass caught for Arkansas’s Legacy Lunker program caught by Dylan, me and Kyle is pretty special,” Kevin told Wired2fish while on the phone with his son Dylan. “We’ll get replica mounts of our bass and know all the bass are alive and healthy back in their home lake. Bass fry from them will help Arkansas big bass to get even bigger.”
