Big Bass in the lake 9.4 lbs.!
COTEAU HOLMES — Heavy fishing pressure on bass club tournament day prompted an Arnaudville bass angler to lighten up as he fished Lake Fausse Pointe.
The result? A very, very heavy bass, a trophy-sized fish that was released after Zachary Brazda boated it and weighed it in at Lake Fausse Pointe State Park in Iberia Parish.
Brazda, who is enjoying his third year in the four-year-old bass club, said he hooked the 9.4-pound bass about 1:30 p.m. while fishing the tournament with Aaron Guidroz of Butte La Rose. They were in a double borrow pit along the West Protection Levee with half-a-dozen other boats that Saturday, he said Thursday night.
He scouted the area, locally known as the Twin Ponds, and caught a 4 1/2-pound class bass on a Chatterbait there on Tuesday.
The 32-year-old all-around outdoorsman used a fairly unconventional method, at least for around the Teche Area, to put that “hawg” in the boat during the bass club tournament. He was using a spinning rod and reel combination with 10-pound test line. At the business end of the line was a Cajun Lures Baton, a Senko-type soft plastic.
“My thought process was, for one, it was very windy. And I was trying to do something different. I’m fishing behind three of four boats. I watched three different boats fish that tree before me,” he said about the structure the fish was near.
When he and his tournament partner finally got a crack at the deadfall, he made a deft cast to a prime spot. The giant bass engulfed the soft plastic and the battle was on.
And what a fight it was.
“She was probably in 10 inches of water. When I set the hook, my partner was in the boat retying. I saw her belly roll up on the side since she was in such shallow water. I told him, ‘Get the net. It’s a good one,’ ” Brazda said.
Lady Luck was smiling on Brazda, his spinning rig and 10-pound test. The hawg opted to do battle away from the branches, roots and other potential tangleations on the shoreline.
“She ran to deeper water. I worked her up. When I saw her, my heart just dropped. I knew I had a fish 8-plus pounds,” he said.
How did he know that? Because almost a year ago to the day he hooked up with that big bass in the borrow pit he caught a 10-pound bass at Toledo Bend – on a spinning rod and reel, 10-pound test line and Senko, he said.
That experience helped in the borrow pit that afternoon in Lake Fausse Pointe.
“I knew I had a big fish at that point. I loosened the drag and worked the fish. It felt like an eternity but it was only a minute or so,” he said. “I finally got her tired out enough to where she came to the top and he (Guidroz) was able to net her.”
He had a bad case of the nerves at that moment and it was contagious.
“Well, I had to sit down. I put her in the bottom of the boat and looked at her, like, ‘Did I really just catch this fish? Here?’” he asked incredulously, again.
Eventually, curiosity got the best of him. He reached and got a digital scale out of the console.
They put the bass on the electronic scale and waited for the readout to flash.
“It said 9 ¼ pounds. The official scale (at the bass club’s weigh in) said 9.4, so it was just under 9 ½ pounds,” he said.
Anglers in the handful of boats, one from his bass club, within sight of the action had their interest piqued, to say the least.
“They didn’t realize how big the fish was until I told them. They thought it was a 5. They were happy. They were ecstatic I caught a fish like that down here. That’s amazing,” he said.
Word about the catch spread like wildfire across the lake. Brooke Morrison, a fishing buddy from Broussard who owns Billeaud’s II in New Iberia, knew about it as he was fishing and long before the bass club’s weigh-in, Brazda said.
After weighing it in to the oohs and aahs of the crowd at the bass club weigh-in, Brazda released the bass.
“I had no desire to keep that fish. I said, ‘Hey, I’m good.’ That’s the biggest fish I ever caught in the lake. I had 4s and 5s last year, (but) not one more than 5,” he said.
Anyway, he said, when he wants fish for the freezer he’ll go after bream and sac-a-lait.
Brazda and Guidroz kept fishing after the big catch.
“We didn’t quit. At that point we really didn’t have a good fish to go with that one. I was not satisfied. I wanted 20 pounds. I knew if there was one good fish in there there’d be another,” he said.
They won the tournament with 18.55 pounds.
Brazda, who works at Bayou Teche Guns in Arnaudville, a family business his father opener in 2002, and the bass became an instant celebrity as it went viral on social media.
“I’ve gotten phone calls from people I haven’t talked to in years, calling to congratulate me,” he said.