‘A Real Rodeo.’ Angler Lands 14-Pound Bass After a Wild Fight

Jim Franklin of Hemphill, Texas, was fishing alone on March 4 on the south finish of Toledo Bend Reservoir. The famed lake on the Texas-Louisiana state line is well-known for big bass, and Franklin has fished it most of his life.

“I’d been catching lots of bass, some days as much as 50 fish, however nothing over 5 kilos,” Franklin tells Out of doors Life of his previous few journeys to Toledo Bend. “I made a decision to vary it up and fish one other space I hadn’t tried this 12 months.”

Franklin made the transfer that morning to a special part of the lake. He fished for 4 hours and caught nothing.

“That’s after I went again to the seven-foot-deep grassy space the place I had been catching bass [earlier],” says the 65-year previous angler. “It was virtually 1 p.m. and I caught a 3 pounder, then a 5 pounder.”

He noticed some bass in shallower water and made a blind forged that path. He was utilizing a Carolina rig with a five-inch smooth plastic Zoom Baby Brush Hog in tilapia magic colour. Franklin by no means felt the fish hit. His fishing line simply received heavy, after which he noticed his line transferring off to at least one facet.

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“I set the hook and it took off, jumped 20 toes from my boat, jumped 4 extra occasions, then took me round my boat and motors. It was an actual rodeo,” he explains. “The fish fought actually arduous for a pair minutes. Then I received it to the floor, and it simply rolled on its facet and laid there — wore out from the struggle I believe.”

Franklin netted the bass and knew immediately that it was a minimum of a ten pounder, possibly 11 or 12. He measured the bass at 26.5 inches lengthy with a 21.5-inch girth. Then he put it on his Bubba scale and it learn 13.57 kilos.

“I knew proper then that it was sufficiently big to be a ShareLunker Legacy bass as a result of it was over 13 kilos,” Franklin says. “What I didn’t know was that after I weighed it, I hadn’t lifted the fish fully off my boat deck, and it was even heavier than I assumed.”

Franklin put the bass in his boat’s well-aerated livewell. Then he phoned the Texas Parks and Wildlife ShareLunker hotline and notified them he’d caught an enormous, 13-plus-pound largemouth to donate to their famed stocking program. Subsequent, he ran his boat with the heavyweight bass to Fin and Feather Resort on the shore of Toledo Bend.

On the marina, Franklin was in a position to transfer the bass over to greater aerated fish tank. Workers from the ShareLunker program confirmed up quickly after, they usually formally weighed Franklin’s bass at 14.23 kilos.

From there the fish was taken to the state’s hatchery in Athens, the place will probably be spawned, and its fry used to inventory lakes round Texas. Later this 12 months, Franklin’s bass can be returned to Toledo Bend the place he can launch it again into the lake the place he caught it.

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Franklin’s bass is the twelfth Legacy Class ShareLunker caught to this point this 12 months, and the second to come back from Toledo Bend Reservoir, based on TPWD. As a part of his reward for donating his roe-swollen bigmouth to the stocking program, he’ll be given a duplicate mount of the massive fish.

“I phoned my spouse and despatched her a photograph of me and my bass, and she or he stated, ‘Oh, that’s good,’ — prefer it was simply one other fish,” Franklin says laughing. “We have now different fish and sport mounts in our home, and this 14.23-pounder reproduction mount is certainly going to hold in our sport room, too.”