Kyle Walley is an avid bass angler, and he goes fishing every chance he gets. Walley made a trip to Lake Bill Waller during the early summer, located near Columbia.

“When we come out here to fish, we definitely don’t come out here for big fish, we come out here to take some home for supper,” said Walley, of Columbia. “This lake has too many small bass, and we’ve been trying to get the population in balance the last couple years, so catching a lunker bass was not on the agenda. But that’s just what happened.”

Walley made one last cast before heading to the boat ramp, and his lure was smashed by a monster bass. After an epic battle between him, the bass and a hungry alligator, he landed the fish. The bass weighed 10.1 pounds, was 25¾ inches long and was the trophy of his lifetime.

“There’s one color worm the bass really like in these parts, and that’s a Gooseberry worm, and we were down to one pack,” said Walley. “We made one trip around the lake and caught 14 fish and the last one slung off our last Gooseberry worm, so we decided to head back to the ramp.”

Before they could get to the ramp, an alligator swam toward the boat, and Alecia Walley wanted to take some photos before they left.

“We trolled up toward the alligator, and he was swimming near the lily pads, and my wife was taking pictures, so I picked up my frog rod and cast my KVD Poppin Perch frog past the alligator and was bringing it back out,” Walley said. “I popped that frog twice, and there was such a massive explosion that I thought the gator ate it, but then I saw the gator swimming the other direction, so I set the hook, and it was like setting the hook into a truck!”

The fish was huge, and it jumped one time in front of the alligator and when the gator realized it was a fish jumping it turned around and came back toward her.

“When the alligator came up to the fish, I gave the fish some slack, and she went back down and wrapped the line around a log,” Walley said. “We ran up there to get the fish off of the log, and every time she boiled near the surface the gator slashed and bit at the bass. The gator kept biting at the bass, so now the gator was trying to catch the fish, and we were trying to catch her before the gator got her.”

Walley finally got the fish off of the log and started trolling away from the pads into open water. But every time the bass got close to the boat and wallowed and thrashed on the surface, the gator tried to grab him.

“The gator finally got between the fish and boat, and it kept biting at the fish every time he got near the boat,” Walley said. “We realized we didn’t have a net, so that made harder trying to land a monster bass without the aid of a net and with an alligator trying to eat the fish. I let the bass go down and then was trying to maneuver her around the boat while my wife started swatting at the gator with a rod to make him leave, but he didn’t. I finally worked the bass around the boat behind the motor so we could get to her, and Dad was able to grab the bass and bring her in.

“I’ve been fishing the lake for 30 years, so I told my dad that this fish was 30 years in the making, and I almost lost her to an alligator,” Walley said. “I couldn’t just come out here and catch a 10-pound bass, I had to do it in spectacular fashion.”

Call Mike Giles at 601-917-3898 or email mikegiles18@comcast.net.