All the days I spent in a deer stand around Thanksgiving, the holidays have only produced one trophy moment. And the trophy I nailed didn’t walk on dry land, it swam in an oxbow lake.
Yep. It was a bass, and it came in 2003 after I swatted just one mosquito too many on another unseasonably warm morning deer hunt.
It was just simply too hot to deer hunt, but I was at my camp in Port Gibson. I was in the Lane Stand counting squirrels — red, gray and black — running around on the dry leaves and in the trees when I got a startling jolt.
My cell phone was vibrating on my butt.
I reached in my back pocket, grabbed the phone and saw it was a call from my pal Sidney Montgomery at Vicksburg.
“Had enough of this heat?” he asked. When I said yes, he made an offer I couldn’t refuse.
“Drive up to Chotard and meet me at the ramp. The white bass are biting and we can catch a hundred,” Montgomery said.
Ninety minutes later, still wearing my camo pants and sweatshirt, I was stepping in his bass boat at Laney’s Landing. I had taken a couple of rods and reels to the deer camp just… well just because.
Montgomery reported that the bite had started about two days ago, on Thanksgiving Day. He had returned from his holiday family gathering to his home on Eagle Lake and heard the news. On Friday he caught about 100 in two hours. On Saturday, he called me.
It was nearing noon when we started making the rounds on Chotard Lake, the oxbow about 20 miles north of Vicksburg. Montgomery gave me a tail-spinner (a one-inch piece of lead, shaped like a small shad, with a small spinner blade at the back) and a Bandit 200.
“They’re on the ramps and roadbeds and stacked like cord wood,” he said. “And for white bass, they’re big, averaging close to two pounds.”
We didn’t go far to make our first casts. After launching at Laney’s we idled out in a big circle to let the water settle and then pulled back up to the ramp to start throwing…
And catching.
A white bass took my tail-spinner on the first cast. I bounced it once off the ramp and BAM! Montgomery made it a double when his first cast landed a few feet from where my fish had hit.
Laney’s ramp produced about 25 fish before it slowed, and we headed across the lake to the Tara Landing at Willow Point. It was a gravel ramp and, boy, was it loaded with fish. Because of the oxbow’s big fluctuation in water level, the gravel bed covers a big area. The fish were all over it, from a foot deep to 8 feet. We hammered them on both lure types and were soon fishing for sport. The fish box was filled.
We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in search of a giant white bass, and ran from ramp to ramp in search of the elusive three-pounder. Nearing sunset, we pulled up to the last spot. It was ramp at Tara Wildlife’s other location (since sold) at Chotard, Newman Towhead. It sits on a point at the mouth of the channel leading from Chotard’s sister oxbow, Albermarle.
White bass didn’t normally stack there, but the ones that gathered there on that boat ramp were usually big. We took a shot.
On Montgomery’s first cast, he hooked a white bass that pushed three pounds on the tail-spinner.
I decided on the chartreuse Bandit 200 and fished it a little deeper. My cast landed over the center of the ramp and I quickly cranked it down until it made solid contact with the cement.
I paused a couple of seconds and then pulled the lure by sweeping my rod. As I went to reel in the slack… BAM!
The strike was vicious and when I set back on the fish, it didn’t give an inch. I was bowed up with a big fish, much too big to be a white.
“Bet you foul-hooked one of those spoonbills,” Montgomery said, laughing out of the other corner of his mouth from his ever-present corncob pipe. “Or maybe you got a sea-run (striped bass).”
Whatever it was, it was big and it was strong. I was fighting it, but was not in control. The fish was holding its ground and actually taking line.
After about 30 seconds, it made a mad dash straight at the boat and I had to reel as fast as I could to keep up. Then, it started taking drag again, this time trying to run to the deep of the old river channel. It came up on top and made a big splash, but in the darkness of the shadows from the opposite tree-lined bank, we couldn’t identify it. Then it went deep again, and then back up.
I was moving all over the boat, trying to keep the line out of the big motor at the stern. Montgomery used his bow-mount button to tilt the engine up, because he knew what was coming next.
The fish made the expected run at the boat but because of Montgomery’s quick thinking, there was no propeller in the water to mess this whole thing up. Instead, the fish made a dash along the side of the boat.
When it went by, I looked down and nearly fainted.
“Sid, it’s a largemouth! It’s a largemouth!” I hollered.
“No way,” he said.
But it sure was. Below my feet as it ran past, I could see the big wide mouth open with the chartreuse lure sticking halfway out.
The dark green back of the fish was another sign.
It flashed past Montgomery, who verified it.
“Oh man, it’s a giant,” he said.
Things got serious very quickly at that point. This became a fish that had to be caught. Montgomery pulled up the trolling motor, and thankfully we had drifted far enough with the current coming from Albermarle chute that we were over open water, far from the bank and any snags.
It was simply a matter of time, letting the fish play itself out. Obviously, a life of swimming against the currents of the Mississippi River and its connected lakes, makes for strong fish and this one didn’t give up easily.
But, give up it did, and Montgomery slid the net under it as I guided it slowly back to the starboard side.
“Ten pounds, easily,” Montgomery said, “the biggest oxbow bass I’ve ever heard off, much less seen. An 8 is rare, and this one, well…”
We never knew for sure. We took care of the big fish, handling it very gently. We let it swim and held it underwater between taking pictures and admiring it.Then we let it go and watched it ease off for a few feet before kicking in a new gear and taking off in a flash. She was fine.
The photo is my trophy.
***
Got a story to share about fishing and hunting, contact Bobby Cleveland at bobbyc7754@yahoo.com. Some stories — photos are required — will be selected to run on Ms-Sportsman.com.
Be the first to comment