When Travis McCollough launched his boat on Lake Fork Phantom Hill on Feb. 5, he wasn’t planning on landing a record largemouth. The 76-year-old angler from Abilene, Texas, just wanted to get in some fishing practice.
“I had an upcoming tournament with Stillwater Bass Club. It’s a Christian bass fishing club where we don’t get really competitive, we just fish and love and support one another,” McCollough tells Outdoor Life. “I like to practice on other lakes rather than the place where I’m fishing the tournament because I don’t like to mess with the fish beforehand. So, I went to Fork Phantom Hill because it was close by.”
Launching his boat on the 4,200-acre lake at about 11:30 am, Travis headed to an area where he’d had luck previously. The water temperature was cold, around 45 degrees, and McCollough knew he was going to have to fish slowly and methodically. Stopping the boat in about 17 feet of water, McCollough tied on a Strike King ½ ounce Green Pumpkin jig with a Crawl Worm trailer. He began working the bait along a shallower ledge in about 8 feet of water.
“When the water is cold like that, I like to fish with jigs,” McCollough says. “I don’t bounce them or move them around much. Instead, I just crawl them slowly along the bottom and big bass just can’t stand it.”
McCollough fished for two hours without having any luck and was getting slightly frustrated. Around 1:30 pm, he looked up at the sky and said a quick prayer, and almost immediately, he got a strike.
“When I got the bite, she just took off like nothing I’d ever hooked before,” says McCollough, who’s been fishing local tournaments for 30 years. “I set the hook two or three times, and she was pulling drag and running out to deeper water. She tried to come up out of the water, but she was so big she couldn’t even jump. It was just awesome.”
Travis fought the bass for around 20 minutes before finally bringing it alongside his 21-foot Bass Cat Puma STS. Then he reached down, got ahold of the giant largemouth’s bottom lip, and hefted it onboard.
“I was so jacked up. It was like living in a dream. I couldn’t believe I actually landed that fish. I don’t lose a lot of them, but you never know what’s going to happen. Bass like that pull so hard, hooks can tear loose, or the line can get tangled around something. But there she was in my hands, 25-inches long and 21-inches wide. Looked like a big old football.”
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Deciding to quit while he was ahead, Travis put the bass into his live well and then headed back to shore. He stopped briefly on his way to show the fish to a group of crappie anglers who “about fainted dead away.” Realizing what he had, McCollough called the Texas ShareLunker hotline and asked them come out and see the fish. The crew with Texas Parks and Wildlife headed his way immediately .
The biologists weighed in MCullough’s bass at a whopping 14.35 pounds, which makes it the third Legacy class ShareLunker collected so far this season. They also informed him that it was a potential new lake record. McCollough was ecstatic to hear the news, as it’s easily the biggest bass he’s ever caught.
“It’s been such a dream,” he says. “I’ve been fishing for over 40 years, been married for 56 years, and I’m about to turn 77 years old. For Jesus to allow me to catch a bass like that on top of it all, I just feel so blessed.”
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