How to catch a 10-pound bass

Here’s a fishing tip I bet you’ve never gotten before.

If you want to catch a 10-pound largemouth, just go down to the boat dock on Lake D’Arbonne with three of your friends in the August heat, grab a Spro Frog and start chunking. If you don’t think that will work, think again.

Ask 16-year-old Bernice fisherman Brennen Ramsey.

That’s exactly what he did last Saturday. He was just passing the time before watching the big Mayweather – McGregor fight on television at a friend’s house. The weather looked right to maybe catch a couple of two pounders, so Brennen gave it a shot.

It wasn’t long until Brennen’s expectations were met, five times over. His bass weighed 10 pounds, two ounces.

“You know how when a big bass usually hits a topwater lure, it usually just sucks it under?” he asks. “Well that isn’t what happened this time. That big fish just blew it out off the water. He destroyed it. At first, I thought it was a grinnel or a gar. The drag on my reel was too loose and and the fish started stripping off line.

“I got it tightened down, because I still wanted to catch whatever it was,” he said. “Then it jumped out of the water, or tried to, and I saw the mouth on it. Oh man, I started to panic. I thought it was going to break my rod.”

He finally got it up beside the dock, but the next question was how to get the huge largemouth from the water surface up three feet in the air to the dock. They certainly weren’t prepared for that. But his friend, Zach Beckham somehow laid down on the dock, reached over and lipped the bass and got him in. It was crazy.”

By that time, he had let friends Dustin Booker and Morgan Albritton in on what was going on. They had also been fishing, but gave up on the slow bite and went up to the house.

Catching big fish isn’t anything new to Ramsey, a member of the D’Arbonne Woods Charter School bass team in Farmerville. He has fished since he was four years old. He has caught several seven and eight pound fish, but this is his first double digit bass.

He and partner Caleb Gates of OCS also qualified for the National High School Bass tournament on Lake Pickwick in Alabama just over a month ago. They finished 53rd out of 200 plus teams.

He thought about putting the big bass back, but remembered his grandpa Glen Sams had told him when he got old enough to really understand fishing and caught one over 10 pounds, he would have it mounted for him.

Here’s probably the best part of this whole fish story. When asked if catching one that big would change him or his fishing approach, he said no.

“My outlook is the same,” he said. “I always live by the thought that you fish hard as you can like you never have before, because you never know when you’re life will be over. The Lord can call you home any minute.”

By the way, if you want to know how serious a bass fisherman Brennen is, just ask him where he caught the monster.

“Somewhere on the Bernice side of the lake. That’s all I’m saying.”  See…