ZWOLLE– On March 16 at Toledo Bend, St. Martinville’s Braxton Resweber survived Murphy’s Law to hook and boat his PB, a 9.87-pound bass that had every opportunity to get away.

That “hawg”, just shy of 10 pounds, emerged as the biggest bass caught in the Outlaw Outdoors 3rd annual Trey Burford Memorial that, coupled with a seventh-place finish worth $500 in the 90-boat field while fishing with Greer Billeaud of Lafayette, pushed their winnings to $3,000. They culled to a five-bass limit weighing 23.75 pounds.

“We had a limit pretty early,” Resweber said, noting the two bass anglers upgraded for the next few hours before the big girl bit.

That bite came at approximately 1 p.m., he said, on his long cast toward a grass bed with a green pumpkin/shad Z-Man Chatterbait.

“Oh, man, it happened so fast. It was a disaster. I set the hook and it was coming in. Greer was going to net it but the net got stuck in three of my poles in the back of the boat. Then it was jumping on the side of the boat,” he said.

The situation shifted into alarm mode soon after the boat’s veteran bass angler urged him to get the fish in quickly while he concentrated on being patient on his end of the fishing rod. The mesh in the net was tangled in rod tips.

“It seems like it took forever. That fish should have come off but it was meant to be, I guess. He got the net underneath,” he said.

Billeaud finally was able to scoop and lift the huge bass into the boat, where they feasted their eyes on a 9-plus pounder. Exactly how much it weighed they wouldn’t know until a few hours later.

But the time for admiring it was fleeting.

“I let some emotion come out but I wasn’t too loud. I knew it was my biggest fish but I didn’t know how big. I didn’t have a scale,” he said.

“I wish I could have got to enjoy it more. We didn’t see it for very long. In, out, for a photo and back in the livewell. I didn’t realize how big it was.”

His previous biggest bass was a 7.84-pound lunker bass he got his hands on last April on Toledo Bend. It bit on a Missile Baits D Bomb.

The fundraising tournament’s $10,000 first-place prize was grabbed by Travis Merritt of Iowa, La., and Jeff Merritt, whose five bass weighed 29.28 pounds despite a 1-pound penalty.

Theirs was a fairly comfortable victory after the second-place team of Benjamin Gulett of Converse and Dustin Rivers of Noble checked in with a limit that tipped the digital scale at 27.62 pounds worth $3,000.

Corey Chesser of Buna, Texas, fishing by himself, finished third with five bass weighing 25.45 pounds for $1,250, including money for the fifth-biggest bass, an 8.27-pounder.

Among those in the tournament field that weighed at San Miguel Park SRA Site 7A was Darold Gleason of Many, a former Bassmaster Elite Series angler who is concentrating on Bassmaster Opens EQs in 2024. Gleason and Andre Martin of Lena finished fourth with five bass tipping the digital scale at 25.35 pounds worth $1,000.

Resweber, a 27-year-old shipping coordinator for Starr Power Tongs LLC, said he and his tournament partner concentrated their fishing efforts on specific depths in drains with hydrilla.

“There was a particular zone, 6- to 8-foot. It seems like the bigger ones were in the grass,” he said.

Billeaud, 31, manager at Billeaud’s III in Broussard, set the stage for the lofty tournament finish by catching a lunker bass while scouting Friday afternoon, according to Resweber.