Riley Harris of Orange has reeled in plenty of heavyweight bass over the years, but none to compare to the bruiser that gobbled up his football jig on the morning of November 22 at Sam Rayburn Reservoir.
Harris, 26, was out checking a few waypoints on a chilly Friday when he spotted a few fish on his electronics. The bass were holding around a brush pile in about 22-25 feet of water. “I could tell it was an active pile, so I threw in there with to check it out,” Harris said. “She ate it on the second cast. When I set the hook I knew it was a really big fish because I couldn’t move it for like 5-10 seconds, but I had no idea how big until I got it in the boat. It was a giant — way bigger than my previous best 10.80 pounder.”
Harris weighed the bass on a Bubba digital scale. It registered a whopping 13.87 pounds. Eager to get a certified weight on the catch, he raced to the Tackle Addict tackle shop in nearby Brookeland. There, the bass weighed an official 13.79 pounds. The angler said he promptly returned the big bass to the exact spot where it was caught. It was released in good shape. Though Harris’ bass is well shy of the lake record mark of 16.80 pounds set in 1997, it’s the biggest fall bass reported since 2015 from the 59-year-old reservoir east of Lufkin. The angler said he plans to enter the big fish in the Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Toyota Share-Lunker program as a Lew’s Legend Class entry. The Legend Class is reserved for bass weighing upwards of 13 pounds that are caught outside the Jan. 1- March 31 window for Legacy Lunkers. Legacy fish are 13-plus pounders that are loaned to TPWD for spawning and genetics research at the program headquarters in Athens. TPWD fisheries biologist Dan Ashe says he was somewhat surprised hear the news about Harris’ November giant, mainly because it was caught at a time of year that typically doesn’t produce many Texas teeners. Most of the true heavyweights are caught during spring, once their ovaries are fully developed.
