Two Private Father Son Bass Fishing Bests in at some point!

Bill Dorris and his son Jimmy, have a combined 100 years of bass fishing experience between the two of them. The South Louisiana anglers have fished everywhere from the local rivers and bayous in Louisiana to trophy lakes like Toledo Bend and Lake Guntersville in Alabama. Through the years the father-and-son team has caught a lot of big bass.

However, none of the fish they’ve caught in the past measure up to the fish that they recently caught in Bayou Lacombe in Southeast Louisiana. Jimmy and Bill were fishing at a local jelly jar tournament called Bass Assassins.

The two were fishing in separate boats and Jimmy wasn’t having very much success. “I picked up a small bass every once in a while, but I never got on anything really good,” Jimmy said.

That all changed at approximately 11:15 when Jimmy entered into a small canal just off of the main bayou. He started flipping a jig along the shoreline and made a flip into an area of water that was two feet deep. Jimmy felt the line tighten and set the hook. “I stuck her and it made a run so hard I thought I had a Choupique (bowfin) on my line,” Dorris said.

Gauge Wagner was Jimmy’s teammate on this day and after seeing the fish and recognizing that it was a bass, Wagner positioned himself to lip the fish on the side of the boat. He dropped down on his knees and hung over the gunwale. As the fish neared he grabbed the bass with one hand and then got his other hand around it and lifted it into the boat. Gauge started shouting… “You got a ten! You got a ten!” and Jimmy said, “If it’s not…it’s not going to miss it by much!” Jimmy put the monster of a fish into his live-well and returned to fishing.

About five minutes later his father Bill, passed by as he was exiting the same canal that Jimmy was fishing. Bill was heading back to the launch and called out to Jimmy “Guess what I got?” to which Jimmy parroted his father with the same question… “Guess what I got?”  It turns out Bill caught an 8 lb. 10 oz. largemouth bass in the same canal a few minutes before Jimmy caught his 9 lb. 1 oz. fish.

Both of the fish turned out to be personal bests for the lifelong bass fishermen. “It was wild!” he said. “For both of us to catch our personal bests on the same day – within 30 minutes of each other – out of different boats is wild!”

Keith Lusher

Keith Lusher is an award winning outdoor journalist that resides in Covington, Louisiana. He owns and operates NorthshoreFishingReport.com and writes a weekly outdoor column for the Slidell Independent Newspaper. He also writes for the St.Tammany Parish Tourism Commission’s VisitTheNorthshore.com. He is the former host of The Northshore Fishing Report Radio Show and is on the board of the Louisiana Outdoor Writers Association. Keith contributes to numerous publications both online and in print and prides himself on promoting South Louisiana’s unique fishery. To contact Keith email: [email protected]