Daylight had just broken Tuesday when bass guide Lawrence Lee settled in. He was fishing alone from his 21-foot Phoenix boat on J.B. Thomas Reservoir. The 7,300-acre lake southwest of Snyder, Texas, isn’t as well-known as some other Lone Star waters. But Lee has been on a tear catching “teen-sized” bass from it; he caught a 13.12-pounder there earlier this month.
“We just had a cold front move through our area, and I figured pre-spawn bass would be a little deeper when I started fishing this morning,” says Lee, speaking with Outdoor Life from the lake Tuesday. “The surface water temp was 62 degrees, and right away I saw a bass I thought was about 11 pounds on my forward-facing sonar unit.
“She was in 25 feet of water, holding at 15 feet. On sonar I saw her looking at bait like a loaded gun ready to fire. I made a cast between her and the bait, and she rushed my lure.”
The bass slammed a KGB Swimbaits glide bait that Lee had just picked up the week before while attending the Bassmaster Classic in Tennessee. The six-inch, off-white lure is a perfect imitation of crappies and big shad, which Lee says are key food sources for bass in J.B. Thomas.
“She hit that lure really close to the boat, I set the hook, and that was pretty much it,” says the 35-year-old angler from Toler. “She never jumped, didn’t dive deep – reeling her in was like pulling a wet towel to the boat when I netted her.”
Lee weighed the bass that he thought was “just an 11 pounder” on an IGFA-approved scale in his boat, and the fish tallied 13.3 pounds. He put the bass in his livewell and ran his boat to a dock where he weighed it again on shore at 13.1 pounds.
He then phoned the Texas ShareLunker folks to let them know he’d caught another bass over 13 pounds that he wanted to donate to their heralded breeding and stocking program. Next, he called his buddy Christian Gladfelter, Lee’s business partner with Slaunched Guide Service.
“Christian came out about 20 minutes later to see my bass,” Lee explains. “We had about a two-hour wait until the Texas [fisheries] folks were coming to pick up my fish. So, we decided to go fishing until they arrived.”
The two guides went back to hunting lunkers with their forward-facing sonar, and before the team from Texas Parks and Wildlife showed, the pair of guides had scored big on bigmouths.
“We caught and released a pair of 11 pounders, plus a pair of 10 pounders,” says Lee. “Then the Legacy folks got to the lake, and we gave them my bass that on certified scales weighed 13.10 pounds, with a 25.25-inch length and a 20.75-inch girth.”
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After TPWD left with Lee’s bass and headed to the fish hatchery in Athens. The guides went back to fishing.
“We caught and released another 11-pounder,” Lee said while fishing early afternoon on Tuesday. “Our top five bass this morning weighed 57 pounds, and we’re going back after lunch to see if we can catch some more heavyweights.”