Louisiana game wardens arrested a fisherman on April 1 for trying to defraud a lunker bass program on Toledo Bend Reservoir. The angler, Jody K. Jeane, of Leesville, had submitted a 12-pound bass to the program and filled out paperwork claiming to have caught the fish on Toledo Bend — all, allegedly, in the hopes of getting a free replica mount of the fish. Game wardens determined through an investigation, however, that Jeane had lied about the fish, which he later admitted to catching on Vernon Lake.
Jeane was charged with attempted theft and forgery, and he is currently in custody at the Sabine Parish Detention Center. He now faces a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in jail, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
LWDF officials explained in a news release Wednesday that wildlife agents had run into Jeane at the Hickory Ridge boat launch on Vernon Lake on March 15. Jeane was eager to show the agents a 12-pound largemouth he’d caught that morning. He said it was his personal best and that he planned to have it mounted.
“Agents noted the bass had a distinct bloody marking on its tail, indicating spawning activity and providing a unique identifying characteristic,” the news release reads. “On March 16, agents saw Jeane posing with the bass in a social media post from the TBLA Lunker Bass Program … The social media photo also showed Jeane wearing the same clothing observed during his Vernon Lake encounter with the agents. The fish’s distinctive tail markings were also clearly visible.”
After confirming that Jeane had signed official documentation declaring the fish was legally caught on Toledo Bend, agents obtained an arrest warrant for attempted theft and forgery. They met with Jeane at the Vernon Parish Sheriff’s Office, where he admitted to the crimes.
The coordinator for the Toledo Bend Lake Association Lunker Program says Jeane’s arrest “is one heck of a hot topic over here.” (He asked not to be named because of the gossip now spreading on social media.) He says it’s a shame that the Lunker program has been dragged into it, since the Lake Association does a lot of other great work on Toledo Bend.
“We help with scholarships for high school kids, and we put 50,000 fingerlings into the lake every year,” he tells Outdoor Life. “So it’s really horrible when we get in the middle of somebody trying to pull a fast one.”
The local conservation program is meant to highlight Toledo Bend’s trophy bass potential. Any angler who catches a bass weighing 10 pounds or more can submit their fish to the program, so long as they release that fish alive back into the lake. Anglers have to weigh their fish on a certified scale and sign a form attesting to the fact that it was caught on Toledo Bend. In return, they get a free fiberglass replica mount of their trophy.
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One of the owners of Living the Dream Marina, who also asked not to be named, says she remembers weighing Jeane’s fish on their certified scale on March 15. When she asked him where he’d caught the bass, he told her it came from the bay at the mouth of Indian Creek. She then tagged the fish and watched him release it into Toledo Bend.
“It’s crazy that the guy was probably driving a $50,000 boat and he tried to steal a $1,200 replica,” she says. “That’s what’s crazy about bass fishing.”
What’s even crazier, the marina owner says, is what happened two weeks later, when a kid who was kayaking near Indian Creek brought the same bass to their weigh station. The largemouth was almost dead, she says, and it looked like an eagle had gotten to it. But the kid claimed he’d caught the fish, and he tried submitting it to the same lunker program so he could get his own replica mount.
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“This was before we knew that the other guy [Jeane] had lied. But we knew it was the same fish because of the tag number, and I thought it was strange for this fish to still be in this same bay two weeks later,” she says. “So that’s two people who lied and tried to manipulate the system to get a replica off of the same fish.”
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