When T.J. Taylor talks, the big bass listen. If you’re an avid angler who enjoys getting the big bite from time to time, it might be a good idea you cupped an ear as well.
Taylor is a fishing/hunting guide from Lubbock, Texas, who appears to have cracked the magical code for catching giant largemouth bass off spawning beds at Lake Alan Henry, a 2,800-acre impoundment located midway between Lubbock and Sweetwater, Texas.
Between Jan. 1 and April 30 of last year, Taylor claims he and his clients caught and released a remarkable 26 bass over 10 pounds from the tiny, West Texas impoundment.
Amazingly, that’s more than half the number of people who live in the nearest town. With a population of 50, Justiceburg, Texas, doesn’t have a post office or a school. The town is best known as the home of Norm Cash – a major league baseball Hall of Famer.
But if Taylor keeps up his big bass antics, the remote community at the intersection of State Highway 84 and Farm-to-Market Road 2458 will soon have a new star to crown in Alan Henry.
Constructed 10 years ago on the Big Mountain Fork of the Brazos River, the lake was built to provide a secondary source of water for the city of Lubbock. In the meantime, the Garza County impoundment has quietly blossomed into what could very well be the best little bass lake in Texas and maybe the hottest trophy bass lake in the country.
“This is one phenomenal fishery,” Taylor said. “There are more bass over 13 pounds caught out of this lake than most people realize. The fish are going to keep right on growing and the lake is just going to keep getting better. It wouldn’t surprise me if the next Texas state record comes out of Alan Henry.”
If there is indeed a new state record (the current record is 18.18 pounds) caught from the little West Texas lake, there is a good chance it will be done sometime during March or the first three weeks of April. According to Taylor, that’s the bewitching time for Alan Henry heavyweights.
“From the end of March through the first part of May, I can pretty much guarantee a client a shot at a bass over 8 pounds,” he said. “For double-digit fish, March and April are tough to beat.”
Take that as sound advice from someone who knows.
Taylor has been guiding at Alan Henry for several years and arguably catches more fish topping the 10-pound mark than anyone. But the spring of 2004 was completely off the charts in comparison to previous years.
Taylor’s run on gorilla largemouths included a pair of whoppers that pushed his hand-held scale to 12.9 pounds, one 12.4-pounder and a 13.85-pounder that found a temporary home in a lunker bunker at the Texas ShareLunker headquarters in Athens, Texas.
The ShareLunker program is a unique spawning and genetics research program implemented in 1986 by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Anglers who catch 13-pound-plus Texas bass from Oct. 1-April 30 can put the fish on temporary loan to TPWD so scientists can attempt to spawn the fish in a controlled environment. To date, the program has taken in 367 bass up to 18.18 pounds.
It’s purely speculation, but a faulty scale that read more than 1/2-pound light may have cost Taylor the opportunity to become the first angler to donate more than two ShareLunkers in a single year.
Taylor’s biggest fish weighed 13.85 pounds on certified scales. Oddly, the same fish weighed 13.2 pounds on a hand-held scale – the same scale he used to weigh the 12.9s and the 12.4. The three smaller fish were photographed and released immediately.
“He weighed all three of the fish on a scale that apparently reads 1/2 pound light,” said David Campbell, TPWD’s ShareLunker program leader. “I saw pictures of the fish and there’s no doubt they were well over 10 pounds. He possibly released three other ShareLunkers without knowing it.”
Taylor’s 13.85-pounder wasn’t the only lunker on the prowl on April 13. The guide said he caught eight other fish over 8 pounds on the same day.
Amazingly, Taylor had even better days earlier in the spring. On March 30, his boat reportedly accounted for six fish between 10 and 12.9 pounds. The heaviest five weighed 57 pounds.
“There for a while, I was averaging two fish over 10 pounds per day,” he said. “But it usually starts winding down about the first of May. I’ll probably only catch four or five over 10 pounds the rest of the year.”
Taylor’s secret isn’t anything new to professional fishing ranks. But the popularity of sight fishing apparently has been slow to spread to far West Texas, where some of the region’s best fishing lakes are divided by hundreds of miles of brush, cactus and rattlesnakes.
Taylor says he moves around quietly and looks for spawning fish. He finds plenty of small bass in skinny water. But he spies most of his double-digit bass on underwater rock ledges in water as deep as 10 feet.
“That’s the main key,” he said. “This lake gets a lot of pressure during the spawn. But the majority of the people fish shallow and overlook the deeper stuff. I pass up all kinds of 6- and 7-pound fish. If I don’t think a bass will weigh 10 pounds, I won’t even give it a second look.”
One of Taylor’s go-to baits for bedding fish is a white Mad Man Craw. He fishes the bait on a 7/0 hook. Taylor also uses hand-poured lizards. He makes lizards in a variety of sizes. But he thinks the magnum size, 14-incher is particularly attractive to the heavyweights.
Taylor also hand pours his own worms and snakes. During the summer and fall, he goes after Alan Henry lunkers with snakes that measure 18 and 24 inches long. He rigs the baits Texas style with an 11/0 hook.
“I’m a firm believer in using big baits for big bass,” Taylor said. “The bigger the meal, the better they like it.”
Another tool Taylor has found useful in tempting bedding fish is a heavy-action flippin’ stick made by Buzzy Rods. The rod has a battery-operated vibrator built into the butt of the rod. Push a button and the rod transmits vibrations down the line to the lure.
“The big bass pick up that vibration with their lateral lines and they can’t stand it,” Taylor said. “They usually bite pretty quickly.”
Marshall Holmes of Lubbock will vouch for that. Taylor put Holmes on a 12.4-pounder in early April and the angler used a Buzzy Rod to get the fish to take the bait on the third cast.
“It was amazing,” Holmes said. “T.J. picked me up at the ramp, took me around the corner and told me to `cast right there.’ I turned the Buzzy Rod on and three casts later I had 12-pounder in the boat.”
Four ShareLunkers caught from Lake Alan Henry
For the first time in its 19-year history, four giant bass caught from one lake in two days – Lake Alan Henry in Texas – were added to the Texas ShareLunker program.
The first bass, a 13.14-pounder, was caught by Rickey D. Williams of Lubbock, Texas, on a spinnerbait in 8 feet of water. Later on that same day, Ben J. Kirkpatrick of Wolforth, Texas, hooked into a 13.48-pounder in 40 feet of water on a black and blue jig.
On the second day, Kevin Ray Phillips of Lubbock caught a 13.45-pounder in six feet of water on a Norman DD-14 in Tennessee shad pattern. Another Lubbock resident, Coy Callison, added the fourth entry, with an even 13-pounder. That bass fell to a chartreuse Norman DD-22.
The four monster bass were caught Jan. 29-30 of this year and further proves of Alan Henry’s standing as one of the top trophy bass lakes in the country. No other lake in Texas, including Lake Fork, has accomplished that feat.
The ShareLunker program is run by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Anglers are encouraged to donate bass weighing 13 pounds or more to the department. The TPWD uses eggs from the fish to produce hatchery fish to be stocked in public lakes, releases the fish back to its home waters and also has a fiberglass replica of the trophy created for the lucky angler.
Big bass by the bunches
Lubbock, Texas, fishing guide T.J. Taylor isn’t the only angler with an official ShareLunker entry from Lake Alan Henry to his credit.
The 10-year-old impoundment has produced five official entries since 2000, including a lake record 14.94 pounder caught in April 2000 by Steve Campbell. The lake’s top bass for 2004 was a 14.80-pounder caught April 2 by Bruce Butler of Canyon, Texas.
Phil Durocher, inland fisheries director with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said the lake’s bass fishery appears to be coming into its own after being stocked with Florida largemouths in the early 1990s.
“That just goes to show you what can happen when you’re able to put water in a West Texas lake and keep it there,” Durocher said. “When the lake was impounded in 1993, we figured it would fluctuate like the rest of the lakes in that part of the country. But so far it hasn’t and the Florida bass we stocked there have really taken off. People had better get out there and enjoy it while they can, though, because the pipelines are coming.”
It has been projected that the lake eventually will supply up to 23 million gallons of water daily for the City of Lubbock, about 65 miles northeast.