On Monday, February 26, Tracy Adair of Hemphill, Texas reeled in a mammoth largemouth bass while fishing on Lake Toledo Bend. That fish weighed 13.61 pounds and puts Adair into the rare company of anglers who have caught a Legacy Class (13+ pounds) on that lake.
Quick History of the Big Ones Caught on Toledo Bend
According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Lance Wakeland of Fenton, Missouri was the last angler to boat a Legacy Class fish from Toledo Bend with a 13.30-pound ShareLunker 557 on March 18, 2014.
William Gilbert of Hemphill recorded Toledo Bend’s first-ever Legacy Class fish with a 13.10-pound ShareLunker 251 on Oct. 23, 1996. Eric Weems holds the current official lake record for a largemouth bass with his 15.32-pound catch on July 3, 2000.
“I caught a couple of small fish and then decided to venture out of the pocket onto a small secondary point,” said Adair. “I threw a crankbait a couple of times and got hung up in the grass, so I switched to a jerkbait.”
Adair continued, “I was sitting in about 13 feet of water casting out into eight to nine feet of water, so I threw out a little deeper with the jerk bait. I thought I got hung up again in the grass, and so I pulled hard to get it out of the grass. On the second pull, she took off and I realized I wasn’t in grass, she had the bait.”